Archive of Our Own

***

Preface

***

“Is this wise?” Yana murmured, his anxiety only heightening as his guide frowned. The alien man’s fingers paused, but he did not offer any verbal response as the door’s access panel beeped and flashed green. The heavy barrier in front of them slid down with a pneumatic hiss, and Yana felt compelled to try again. “Of course, I’d never think to question your staff allocations, as I’m sure you’ve had any number of…” he paused, looking the alien over. Skin as tough and craggy as granite, not dissimilar to that of the Judoon who ran this prison, and utterly impossible to estimate the man’s age. “…Decades, of experience?” Yana finished, with far less grace than he’d hoped. “It’s just that, you’ve said this is your most dangerous prisoner, and it’s only my first day—”

“It’s sufficient,” the man interrupted flatly.

Yana wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting; his guide was a creature of few words, clearly more accustomed to their stalwart Judoon bosses than human social niceties. He stepped through the barrier without another word or glance, as though he expected Yana to follow instinctively.  

And Yana did, though not without a pang of resentment. His paycheck, and therefore his livelihood, depended on it.

Quiet. An ominous quiet, punctuated only by their steps as they passed down a dimly and sparse hall. There was almost a relief to it, the quiet, as compared to the clamor within the rest of the megaprison that Yana had encountered as he’d made his way towards the high-security wing. But he couldn’t sustain relief for long, not with concern and uncertainty gnawing at his gut. “Remind me, what has this individual being imprisoned for?”

“Her crimes are many.” His guide didn’t turn around, still plodding his way towards where Yana could see their passage dead ended. “Temporal meddling, arson, theft, public indecency, genetic tampering, upheaval, riotous acts, poly-genocide—”

“Genocide, is that all?” Yana muttered to himself faintly. It was more syllables than he’d heard from his guide all day; a pity the man’s vocabulary appeared to only extend to criminal acts.

Finally, they came to a halt. They'd paused outside an even larger and more imposing door than the forboding grandiosity of the first, and his guide turned around with a glare. “Poly-genocide,” he corrected stiffly. Genocides. Eighteen recorded. Twelve more suspected.  Seven thousand and one charges total.”

“Seven thousand—” Yana intoned before stopping himself short, reminding himself that bafflement in a place such as this was hardly polite.  “A busy woman.”

The alien put his hand on the barrier’s sensor, not flinching at the brief flash of a hypodermic as his blood was sampled, and a code was keyed in a second later. Biometrics meet code. A difficult combination to beat, no matter how many centuries passed them by.

“Not a woman. Gallifreyan.”

***

Yana was by no means a career jailer. On the contrary, he was a resolute scientist who’d devoted his time to the upliftment of people—to their liberation, ironically enough. And, although he liked to think of himself as a man of disciplined principles, and he certainly understood the need for incarceration to maintain the public peace (particularly these days, as panic grew in proportion to every dying star) he couldn’t help but find the whole display…

An asteroid-shaped megaprison, the likes of which he’d never dreamed of, much less seen! Grime layered over grime, all plastered onto impersonal concrete and metal walls, soundless and soulless apart from when, worse, it wasn’t. Yana had passed uncountable rows of cells while he’d made his way to the administrative office, waiting to be assigned. Behind bars he'd seen Sycorax, Pting, Skithra, even an Ood for pity’s sake! He’d even swore that a cell on the far right had housed nothing but a stone statue of an angel. All range of creatures, from the strange to the banal, and their only unifying factor had been the stench of misery clogging up the halls, and the utter hopelessness on every expression.

…distasteful.

But, tastes aside, ‘needs-must’ as the old saying went. Yana had recently jumped the last cargo hauler out from Verssa-three, shortly before the planet’s collapse, and he’d had very little choice but to accompany the vessel to its final destination of Judoonia. He’d done so with very little warning, having remained on poor Verssa as long as possible to help with the evacuation efforts, and thus he’d found himself woefully underprepared for travel, with little more on his person than a small cache of credits and his pocket watch. In short: Yana had no money to his name, and no items worthy of sale. Certainly nothing that could afford him transport off Judoonia.

After a momentary pang of fear, and another of despair for the loss of yet another planet, Yana had pulled himself from the pavement and got to work. It was hardly the first (nor the tenth, nor fiftieth) time he’d had to start over from scratch. And, what he lacked in material goods, he prided himself on more than making up for in strategic thinking.

It was simple, really. What he needed was a job.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, Judoonia had very little need for Yana’s expertise—or, at least, very little inclination to accept it. He’d spent his first day on the planet wandering from shipyard to shipyard, putting his rudimentary grasp of Judoon poly-consonantic language work by offering his (not insignificant) skills in ship design. Or, when that failed, for even basic spacecraft repairs. But Yana found himself turned away at each site, with harsh words decreeing that what few jobs were left on Judoonia, were strictly for the Judoon. Not for (and Yana was forced to paraphrase here) ‘soft, un-weathered off-worlder scum’.

Yana spent his first night on Judoonia shivering in a hollowed-out commercial building, but he but refused to be discouraged. He’d faced far worse. Reinvigorated and stubborn, he’d awoke early the following morning and spent the entire day trudging from chemical labs to holo-farms; to any place of business that even remotely brushed against the sciences. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Judoon were staunchly anti-science, and his offerings to teach physics and biologics were violently rebuked. As the sun began to set on the second day, his confidence was becoming tinged with growing desperation. Yana had even approached the city’s hospital to offer up his services as a medic, as a last resort. But apparently, suggesting that he, as an off-worlder, should be allowed so much as a glimpse at the vulnerabilities of Judoon physiology, was highly offensive.

That evening, Yana considered himself lucky for having made it back to his abandoned hideaway at all, albeit a tad bruised.

By the third day, he’d admit to a certain level of panic—alongside hunger, thirst, and sore bones that longed for a soft bed. When Yana pulled himself onto the streets once more, even he hadn’t known where he’d be turning to next. It was by fortune alone that he spotted three non-Judoon figures (Vinvocci, if his xenobiology was correct) proceeding slowly towards a local shipyard processing hub across the road.

Yana had followed them, hardly knowing why. Perhaps it was the certainty with which the three walked, unobstructed, somehow exempt from the vicious scrutiny Yana himself had experienced as an off-worlder to the planet. Or possibly, it was because the individuals looked as tired and hungry as he himself felt. But regardless of why, Yana did follow. And, not fifteen minutes of introductions and flattery later, he’d learned the following from his new allies:

Firstly, the trio were workers at a Judoon megaprison orbiting the nearby edge of the system. Apparently, the Judoon’s xenophobia meant that they preferred to avoid hands-on contact with any alien prisoners, and as such, off-worlder guards were in high demand.

Secondly, they were to be transported there any moment now, from the very platform on which they all currently stood.  

And thirdly, yes they were still hiring; how kind of him to offer.

Yana had less than ten seconds to grapple with his morals regarding megaprisons, much less with whether or not he was offering his services at all, before the platform began to hum with activity, preparing for transport. He stared at the metal plating underfoot before casting a look towards the Vinvocci, and finally throwing one final glance towards the burnt-out building that had been his shelter for the past two nights.

His feet remained firmly on the platform.

***

Yana followed his guide through the second door and stepped into what appeared to be a monitoring booth, complete with a small swivel chair parked at a control panel, and a large plexiglass screen forming the far wall. Beyond the glass there was another short hallway no more than six feet in length, which dead-ended at yet another barrier door.  

“Speakers,” his supervisor said, gesturing towards what appeared to be a rudimentary telecom system and microphone atop the panel. “Lock system for door.” A gesture towards a set of black buttons. “Prison door—emergency only. Do NOT press!” An emphatic nod towards a large red button under security glass, as well as another towards the far door Yana could see at the end of the intervening hall.

Well that was fairly straightforward. Yana could already feel his buttocks ache from the look of the swivel chair, but apart from that he could hardly complain. At very least, the booth was private, and years spent in solitude on dying planets had made Yana a consummate expert at self-entertainment. “So, I just sit here and ensure the prisoner doesn’t escape?” A curt nod from his guide confirmed this, and Yana wandered closer to the control panel, brushing his hand over the various buttons to familiarize himself with the layout. He peered through the glass and into the hallway, only then spotting what appeared to be a small letterbox halfway up the jailcell door. “And what do I do with that?”

“Bring food,” his guide replied, pulling out an unappetizing tin from the carrier bag he’d brought along. Yana took it from him delicately, nose wrinkling at what appeared to be nutrient cubes, fast approaching their expiration date. “Once daily for prisoner. Pick up in office before shift.”

Yana could see that there was a small biometric lock alongside the food hole, similar to that which his guide had used to enter the booth. His fingers twinged, already dreading what would be a very long few months of repeated pinpricks. “Understandable,” he nodded, summarizing what he knew for them both. “To be clear, my duties are to fetch food before my shift, feed her daily, and remain in this booth to keep watch over her?”

Another wordless nod.

He could do this. It was an inoffensive task list, as far as prisons went, and far better than Yana had feared on arrival. He steeled himself before nodding again, this time to himself as he sunk onto the chair and faced the viewscreen. There was a moment of quiet wherein Yana’s heartbeat sounded deafening to his ears, and he tried his hardest not to dwell on the claustrophobia of his position: deep beneath millions of tons of stone and steel within the heart of a maximum-security alien prison, with at least three security barriers between himself and freedom. But a moment later he was pulled from his panic by a passing thought. “Can I see her? The prisoner? It might be a tad challenging to keep an eye on her, if not.”

Wordlessly, the Judoon hit a large button on the top left of his panel, and immediately half of the dark plexiglass was alit by a display screen. On the left, Yana could still see through the tinted glass towards their connecting hallway. But on the display there was what appeared to be a picture of a jailcell. Four slate-grey walls which were positively covered in indecipherable charcoal drawings, a similarly unremarkable floor, a small toilet, and a bare-bones bed that made even his hideaway on Judoonia look cozy. And on that bed there was a small humanoid figure in a maroon jumpsuit, curled up and facing away from the camera—

“Achoo!”

Yana startled, embarrassed that it had taken the prisoner sneezing to make him realize that the video was a live feed rather than a static image. But now it was obvious as the prisoner rubbed at her face and sat up wearily, smoothing back her hair with a sigh. Blonde hair, shoulder-length and poorly washed, framing a face that remained rounded and vivacious despite malnourished cheeks that could only be attributed to the heinous tin of food he’d been handed earlier. She looked tired. She looked shockingly young. However, although Yana couldn’t see her eyes clearly from the limited view of the security footage, her expression had a hard-set steeliness to it that he associated more with battle-worn militants than humanoid youths. Yana almost wanted to turn to his guide and ask if all this (two triple-enforced steel barriers with bio-coded locks) was really necessary for such an individual, but he knew the question was foolish. It would be inexcusable to underestimate anyone based on short stature and a kind face, as Yana himself had been underestimated on many occasions.

And seven thousand crimes, lest he forget…

“I go now.” Yana turned to see that his guide had returned to the booth’s exit, before stopping and turning back to Yana with a look that seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. “Your name…?”

“Oh,” Yana felt embarrassed for having forgotten his own manners so quicky. “My apologies, I should have introduced myself before we started. You can call me Profess...well, I suppose titles have little purpose here, so ignore that. You can simply call me Yana.”

His guide blinked once, slowly. “Ee-a-n,” he drawled out, in a harsh trifecta of syllables.

“Almost,” Yana said encouragingly, hiding his wince. “Yan—"

“EeAhN.”

Yana sighed. It was roughly the same welcome he’d had from their Judoon overseers this morning, so he wasn’t sure what he’d expected. “Ian,” he agreed, as close to a compromise as they’d come. And perhaps it was better to work under a pseudonym in such a place, regardless. “Ian will do just fine.”

“EeAhN. Start at 06:00. End at 23:50. Staff bunkers at Tower Delta for sleep. Canteen at Tower Ka. Pay—”

Yana tuned the rest out, eyes closed and jaw set. The pay was paltry, but he knew this already. No leave for illness, no concept of vacation days—no days off of any sort. Not that Yana would take them even if they had been offered; as it was, it would take months of non-stop work before he could so much as dream of passage off Judoonia. At least his lodging and food would be taken care of for the duration. “Yes, thank you…what was it again, Sra-kar?” Yana interrupted, with only a trace of irritation clouding his tone. Thank you for the introduction, Sra-kar, as well as the tour. I believe I can handle it from here.”

For another moment, the man stood in the exit, and another peculiar expression washed over his face. “Avoid talk, with prisoner. She is…confuse. Talk unwise.” Then Sra-kar’s expression returned to its stony baseline, and he stepped through the exit barrier without another word.

And for the first time in days—maybe even months, it was hard to be certain—Yana found himself entirely alone.

***

Day 1

***

Well, that was foreboding. Yana found himself assaulted by the booth's oppressive quiet, worsened by the ominous twist in his gut from the guide’s words. He pushed back against such foolish anxieties with a stern reminder that loneliness was a luxury these days, particularly in a prison, but then his eyes caught the tin glinting from the control panel and he was pulled from his thoughts and reoriented to the task at hand. He glanced towards a clock on the panel, which read that it was already nearly 22:00 on the prison’s fabricated time zone. Less than two hours to go.

He just had to feed the prisoner, return to his booth, and wait out the remainder of his shift. There was no need to feel nervous, and certainly no need for what felt absurdly like stage fright as he grabbed the tin and headed towards the booth’s interior door. Yana didn’t even feel the pain as his finger was pricked and the barrier slid open, heightened as his adrenaline was. Ninety minutes, no words. Place the tin through the barrier then leave. It was the simplest job he’d had in decades; he could do this!

He was in the hallway. As expected, as soon as the floor registered his weight, the barrier behind him slid shut, and Yana’s anxiety skyrocketed further. There was only one barrier between himself and the prisoner now, scarcely six steps and a simple contraption of steel and locks between himself and one of the galaxy’s most prolific criminals.

Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step, and—

Yana stopped nearly flush with the door and listened. Nothing. Not a peep from the prisoner beyond the barrier. Not that he’d expected as much, per se, other than within the most paranoid vestiges of his mind. Still, his hands were trembling slightly as he placed his finger over the biosensor, allowing it to read the residual blood on the tip before the flap popped open. Without pause, without daring to so much as peer through to the light he could see shining through from the cell, he pushed the tin forward—with so much nervous force that he could hear it slide off the ledge and clatter onto the cell floor.

“Oi! There’s no need to throw it!”

“Er—sorry! Truly sorry!” Yana found himself saying before he stopped himself short, face flushed and swearing under his breath. Don’t speak to the prisoner—it had been the ONLY rule he’d been given, so how had he managed to fail it so quickly?! What had taken him six steps upon approach, he cleared in three hasty leaps on his return, keying in his ID code before falling back into the chair with a lengthy exhale. If he’d thought his heart had been beating quickly before, its rate had now surely doubled.

“Hey! You there, behind the camera. Hello?”

Yana was pulled from his self-rebuking by a voice. He glanced up, only to see that the prisoner had wandered close to the security camera and was looking directly into the lens. Her face filled the screen, so close that he could see a light smattering of freckles across her cheeks. Cheeks that were stretched tight with what seemed to be…amusement?

“Chin up, first days on the job are always rough.”

How had she known?! Yana could swear his heart had stopped and, foolish though he knew the thought was, he found himself swiveling around to ensure it wasn’t him who was under surveillance. But no, there were no cameras in the booth, and the two doors between himself and the jailcell remained firmly closed.

“Hello? Hey!”

Yana didn’t dare respond. He told himself it was simple compliance with his orders which held his tongue, not fear. But that didn’t explain what kept him glued to his seat for the following eighty-five minutes, not daring to move a muscle, hardly breathing as his gaze remained fixed to the clock on the panel.

23:47

There were only three minutes left on his shift when Yana dared let his gaze dart back towards the video feed. The prisoner was back on her bed now, sitting cross-legged next to the half-uneaten food tin and staring at the far wall. Yana squinted, following her line of sight towards what appeared to be sketches of faces, mostly humanoid, of various ages and genders, interspersed with looping circles beyond his interpretation. He looked back at the prisoner, just in time to see a wave of sadness wash over her expression before it flatlined into resignation.

23:50

It was time for him to leave. Yana stood with a stretch, smoothing down the starched lines of his staff tunic before turning towards the exit.

“I’m sorry. That must have seemed a bit ominous, didn’t it? Me knowing you’re new. I didn’t mean for it to come off like that.”

Yana froze, before slowly turning back towards the screen. The prisoner hadn’t moved from the bed, but she was facing the camera lens again rather than the drawings. He had questions—a great many questions, if he were honest—but all of them were unwise to voice.

“You don’t have to say anything. You shouldn’t, actually, rules and whatnot. I just wanted to say sorry, and, er...thank you. For apologizing earlier. An apologetic prison guard is, well, it’s something. So, thank you.”

It wasn’t exactly the tone of a hardened criminal that Yana had expected. There was something jocular about her cadence, not to mention her hesitance, and despite his best intentions, Yana felt himself put incrementally more at ease.

Still, that didn’t excuse what he did next.

“You’re welcome.” His hand was on the microphone, and the words were out of his mouth before his brain could stop them. Once again, his face felt intolerably flushed, and on the screen he could see that the prisoner appeared as surprised to hear him speak as he felt. Without stopping to see whether she would respond, Yana rushed towards the exit and stepped through without a backwards glance.

***

Day 2

***

Yana moved with assurance this time; with a confidence that he’d scolded into himself over a sleepless night on a dormitory bunk, fueled by embarrassment over his behavior the previous day. To the booth, then straight on through. No dawdling today, he would give the prisoner her food immediately, without allowing himself the weakness of fearful procrastination. Pinprick at the interior door, then six steps through. Blood on the sensor, open the flap, place the tin through the opening, walk back into the booth, and…there!

Yana blinked, almost shocked by how easy it had been to do just that. He sat down and fired up the security camera just in time to see the prisoner blinking blearily towards the food flap, only just having awaken.

“Thank you—”

“How did you know?”

That perked her up. Her eyes shot open fully and she sat up, clearly having not expected Yana to speak to her again. “How did I know what?”

“How did you know it was my first day yesterday?” Yana continued, pleased that his voice came out in an even tone, betraying none of the curiosity or adrenaline he could feel pulsing under his skin.

The prisoner smiled cheekily. “Ate at you all night, did it?”

It had. “Not at all,” Yana lied. “But I’m curious, nevertheless.”

“Well, for starters, there was your footsteps.” She sat up straighter, scooting to stretch her legs over the side of the bed. “I can’t hear much from behind the door, but footsteps are easy. Bipedal, obviously, but definitely not heavy enough to be a Judoon, and that’s even before I heard you speak. Not a Kluusak either, like the guard who had your job last. Then there was how you overestimated the food flap ledge by a good ten inches.”

“I thought you said I threw it at you?”

She snorted. “Yeah, but that was before your apology. And your ‘you’re welcome’. You don’t seem the food-throwing type—or the jailor type, for that matter. Honestly, who’s ever heard of a polite jailor?”

Yana felt irrationally defensive, despite himself. “What's wrong with politeness? I haven’t taken leave of my manners simply by stepping into a prison.”

The prisoner smiled again, but this time it was soft. “See? You seem like good stuff. Not the jailor type at all.”

Yana didn’t know how to respond to that, other than to bristle against a flush rising to his cheeks that he was grateful remained unwitnessed, but the prisoner didn’t press the matter further. Over the viewscreen Yana watched as she kicked her feet for a moment, as though giving him the option to answer, before her attention was recaptured by the sketchings on the far wall. There was a crease across her forehead, and a strange frown across her mouth that appeared anachronistic to the rest of her face. It made her appear older somehow; the expression appeared almost involuntary, as though it sprung from an internal grievance that demanded privacy, even from the rest of her face itself.

Yana allowed her that privacy. Or, as much privacy as he could allow within the parameters of his job as her watcher. They passed the following hour in silence; Yana half-watching the prisoner as she sat immobile and introspective on the bed, much as he sat lost in his own thoughts regarding his predicament on Judoonia. Months, he reckoned. A year at tops. Then he’d have earned enough to pay for passage to the nearest commercial planet. He could do this for a year. He could do anything for a year, so long as he put his mind to it. As though he’d be defeated by the likes of the Judoon—

“My name is the Doctor.”

The comment snapped Yana from his thoughts. He glanced up to find the prisoner (a doctor?) had finally risen from the bed and was pacing aimlessly around the room, glancing between the sketches and the security camera with a renewed spark of liveliness.

She paused, smiling at the camera. “I meant to say so earlier. Seems only right I should tell you, y’know?”

“Does it?” Yana asked, with genuine surprise. “I’d have thought we’d be advised against sharing names.”

Her smile grew. “Oh, I’m positive the Judoon would advise against it, they’d throw a right old fit if they knew. And we musn’t disobey the Judoon now, must we?”

The sarcasm was blatant, and good-humored, and Yana found himself smiling despite himself. “I’m Y—Ian,” he replied, after a moment’s consideration. His heart was pounding, but his spirits felt mildly improved from their small act of shared rebellion.

“Are you?” Her nose wrinkled. “I know Ians. You don’t sound like one.”

“You’re one to talk, calling yourself a doctor.”

 “The Doctor,” she corrected automatically.

“Regardless,” Yana cut in, “Ian is who I’ve chosen to be here. The locals appear to have a problem pronouncing my name, and in this sort of place, well…you know,” he trailed off, unsure how to politely explain that an alias was wise when working such a job. Much less when communicating with a high-security prisoner.

Her smile shrunk almost imperceptibly, but she didn’t appear to have taken any real offense. “I understand. More than you know actually, no one in the whole universe can pronounce my name either.”

“Not even those whoever named you?”

“No.” Yana was started by the hard edge to her reply, as much as he was to see the amusement had melted from her face entirely. She turned away from the camera and once again was staring towards the sketchings on the wall that he couldn’t quite make out from the viewscreen. “They could’ve, but they’re gone. There’s no one left. Not anymore.”

Yana understood that. He understood that terrifyingly well.

They left it at that.

***

Another hour passed. Then two hours, maybe more.

“How long have you been imprisoned?” Truly, Yana had promised himself he’d keep quiet for the remainder of his shift and was internally berating himself for having caved so quickly. However, although the past few years had involved tribulations far more trying than sitting in a chair, they’d been tribulations of action. Of purpose! And, after the past hours spent fiddling with every switch on his console, swiveling his chair until the hinges creaked in protest, counting every chip in the concrete wall to his right, buffing his nails until the gleamed, organizing his thoughts, and reciting the galactic ledger of elements alphabetically, then by atomic mass…he’d finally admitted that tedium might end him, where the fear, pain, and suffering of his previous decades had failed. So, he’d turned to the only source of interest around.

The Doctor paused, her fingertips still blackened with charcoal and pressed against the wall. She’d been engrossed with additions to her portraiture for over an hour. “Eleven years now. Eleven years, three months, and sixteen days. I’m surprised you didn’t hack into my file and look that up.”

“We aren’t allowed computer access I’m afraid, at least not beyond basic communication pads in the commissary.”

“So, you do have hacking skills? It’s just the access that’s stopping you, not morality or respect for privacy?”

Despite the fact that she was smiling as she said it, Yana bristled. “I’d only do what was necessary to keep myself safe,” he said stiffly.

Her expression turned. “Ah, sorry about that, that was rude, wasn’t it? Everyone always says I never know when I'm being rude. I meant it as a compliment. I was just having a bit of fun.”

Yana remained silent for a moment, mollified and slightly embarrassed that he’d risen to such a clear jest. “Apology accepted, if not a little surprising to hear. After all, as someone recently told me, ‘who’s ever heard of a polite prisoner?’”

The Doctor stilled, taken aback to hear her own words used against her before barking out a laugh, recognizing the comment as the olive branch that it was. “Touche! Ooh, I knew I liked you Ian. It’s been years since I met anyone with a sense of humor.”

That Yana blushed again at that was profoundly embarrassing.

The Doctor wiped her hand across her brow, accidentally darkening her hair with charcoal from her fingertips. “Besides, when I’m not polite they keep threatening to put me in one of those zero-contact cells—the ones with hologram custodians only. And I do hate holograms; they never let me have the last word. They’re expensive though, I haven’t caused enough trouble to deserve that…”

There was an implicit ‘yet’ at the end of the sentence, and they both knew it.

***

“So, Ian—”

Yana was summoned from his thoughts, glancing at the clock before turning his eyes back to the Doctor. Evening already?

The way she said his name was heavy with implied knowing, like she found humor in him using a title that was so clearly false. “Tell me about yourself. What you do, what you look like, where you will go next?” She was lying in the center of the floor, spread-eagled and staring at the ceiling as though she were stargazing into its cement depths. Perhaps she was, in a way. Although her eyes were open, her gaze was unfocused and clearly immersed within an internal world far away from her jailcell.

Yana considered how to respond to the questions. “I’m a scientist,” he started, “first and foremost. But I help where I can, in whatever field I’m needed. Originally, I was a teacher in biomechanics and xenochemistry, but the planet I was found on was destroyed mere days after I obtained my professorship, which rather tanked my career. As of late, I’ve found myself doing mostly engineering work, repairing spacecrafts, energy grids, and anything else really.”

“A scientist!” She sounded genuinely excited by that, though her eyes remained distant. “Excellent, love myself a scientist. I’m one too, some of the time. I guess I’m a lot of things...” but then her face changed, and there was that aged tightness he’d witnessed upon yesterday’s meeting. “You said your planet was destroyed? And that you were found?”

“Yes,” Yana said simply, without emotion. It wasn’t stoicism; although he’d been saddened (though unsurprised) by the loss of his original planet, the mysterious origins of his foundling status had never elicited an emotional reaction from him. For someone who prided himself on curiosity, he'd always felt oddly uninterested in his own origins, as though he had some psychological block against prying into the details surrounding his birth.

The Doctor swallowed, and for a moment her vacant eyes looked damp. “Me too,” she whispered. “It’s—well, sorry to get all sappy about it. It’s just that I only found out recently, and I never got the chance to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry,” Yana said genuinely, watching as her lips tightened. “It’s a more common origin story than one would like to believe, these days, but commonness doesn’t make the lived reality any easier.”

“No, it really doesn’t.” The Doctor scrubbed a sleeve over her face, and when her arm fell back to the floor, her expression had resumed its distanced passivity. “Dark hair?”

“Hmm? Oh, you mean my appearance. Not really, more of a medium brown.” Instead of looking through the glass into their dividing hallway, Yana unfocused his eyes and looked at his own reflection staring back at him from its dark depths. It had been weeks since he’d seen himself in a proper mirror, to his chagrin. He’d always disliked being unkempt, somehow maintaining a prideful sense of vanity even through decades of warzones. “I’m in my late thirties, perhaps older. It's hard to say for sure, given...well, you know.”

She nodded, understanding his wish to not return their conversation to their shared foundling status. “Are you short?”

Yana frowned petulantly. “I’m of average height for a human male,” he sniffed.

 The Doctor grinned knowingly.“Ooh, you’re definitely short.”

“I’m one hundred and seventy-eight centimeters! And besides, you’re one to talk.”

“Oh yeah, right.” She glanced down at herself as though just remembering. “I’ve never been this short before, sometimes I forget.”

Yana wasn’t precisely sure what to make of that comment, so he chose to politely ignore it. “I’ve lost weight,” he noted, watching his reflection as he turned to and fro, checking from all angles. “Food hasn’t exactly been plentiful lately. And I fear to say it looks as though I’m starting to grey at the temples.”

“I miss being grey,” she grumbled to herself, another unfathomable comment for which Yana couldn’t find an appropriate response. “I like being grey! No one questions you when you look old—especially if you look old and male.”

In the glass, Yana watched his own reflection raise an eyebrow, despite the Doctor not being able to see it. “Are you quite sure you’re not insane?”

“Not in the least bit—sure, that is.” There was that smile again, the one that did strange things to Yana’s heart.

He gave his appearance a final once over, before turning away with a sigh. “Razors have become a luxury for me these days as well. Maybe it’s time to give in and grow a beard.”

Out of all comments they’d shared, he was surprised to find that this one drew the most reaction from her. A flicker of tension twisted at her mouth, mostly bitterness, with a hint of sadness and acrimony. “Don’t,” she said sharply, before seeming to catch the ridiculousness of her reaction and sighing, turning towards the camera. “Beards seem to do bad things for people’s personalities, s’all. Best not to risk it.”

She was…peculiar. Funny, sharp, and more fascinating of company than Yana had had in years (or possibly, ever) but peculiar, nevertheless. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied.

She nodded before turning back towards the ceiling and her expression became vacant once more, as her mind drifted someplace far away that Yana could not follow. He watched her for a moment further before returning to his own thoughts, throwing a last glance towards the clock with a sigh.

He hoped she was somewhere peaceful.

He hoped she was dreaming of stars.

***

Day 3

***

By day three Yana was sure of it: the Doctor truly was insane. Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be deterring his affection for her one bit.

“—And Donna!” She punctuated the name with pointed movement, indicating towards a sketch of a women with an expressive face. Her mouth had been drawn open beneath fiery eyes as though she was in the process of giving them both a talking-down. “Aw, now Donna, Donna was amazing! I love that woman. We met Agatha Christie together, if you can believe it!”

“I really can’t,” Yana replied with a fond smile, much as he’d been doing during the tour of her fantastical sketches all day. Each seemed to come with a story or twelve, usually involving a handful of friends and a twirl of her chalk to point at their portraits as she went. Dozens of friends. A truly ridiculous number of friends—too many, if Yana said so himself, and surely more than anyone needed in ten lifetimes over.

“Yes you can, don’t be a spoilsport. We did!” she protested, flying across the room to point emphatically at a different sketch as though it might bolster her argument.

Yana squinted. If his eyes weren’t deceiving him, it was an etching of a giant bumblebee. He blinked twice, nonplussed.

Not to be deterred, the Doctor rambled onwards. “That was a great day. Well—I mean, I almost died. But after that, aww, what a day.”

That too seemed to be a constant in her stories: threats of death. The number of times the Doctor had regaled him with a tale, only to wave away multiple instances of mortal peril like they were mere irritants getting in the way of her storytelling, was baffling. And, concerning. Worse, at times she seemed almost enlivened by it; there was a certain spark came into her eyes whenever she described a particularly clever trap (always with a peculiarly clever solution, one that she’d seemingly wrangled together at the very last minute). All things told, it was a wonder that she’d survived long enough to be imprisoned at all. And that wasn’t including the handful of her stories she’d insisted had ended in her death—only, she claimed she’d gotten over each of those after ‘a few days of sleep, tea, and light complaining’.

Concerns for her mental state aside, Yana found himself frightfully close to retrospectively worried for her wellbeing, in the face of what seemed to be a penchant for risky behavior. 

“—But that was a long time ago, whole lifetimes ago,” she continued, strolling back across the room before stopping in front of a group portrait. He could see the Doctor herself in this one, sketched with minimal detail as though she’d added herself as an afterthought, standing with her arms around a group of three humanoids. One young female and two males, one old and one young, all fleshed out with the loving and exquisite detail she’d clearly forgone on her own imagine.

“Yaz, Ryan, and Graham.” She named them all in sequence with an open smile, brushing her hand over the imagines with care not to smear them. “They’re the friends I’ve been travelling with most recently, up until I was taken here.”

There was an obvious ache to her words, and Yana wasn’t certain if it was ruder to pry or to not acknowledge it at all. “Were they taken prisoner too?”

“No!” she said quickly, “thankfully not, I don’t know how I could have stomached that. They weren’t even with me when I got captured, which is probably for the best.”

“Did you get the chance to tell them you’d been imprisoned?”

She shifted uncomfortably, moving towards the bed and sitting down, her gaze panning over the wall of sketches. “No,” she sighed, “it’s one of the things that keeps me from going mad in here, they don’t know where I am. I have to stay alive and stay sane, because they’ll wait forever for me out there, not knowing—and I can’t do that to them.”

Yana leaned back at his chair, discomfort prompting him to wrench his eyes away from her and stare aimlessly at the wall. His heart felt heavy for her. As they’d discussed previously, he wasn’t able to access her files in any depth without alerting the Judoon administration. However, her public file had been very clear about her sentencing: Life-sentence, no chance of parole. She must already know that; even if she hadn’t been told it upon her capture (and he was certain she had been, given the stringency of Judoon protocol) she was clever enough to reason it out. So, he wasn’t sure whether it was hope or sheer fantasy that led her to believe she’d see her friends again.

Regardless, he had no intention of robbing her of her hope. “You’ve had a great many friends,” Yana commented instead, wishing to pull them both from the morosity of the subject.

She perked up at that. “I have. And they’ve all been incredible; I’ve loved them all dearly. Before the fam, there was Bill and Nardole, and then Clara, and before her there was Amy and Rory, and sometimes River—oh, what a woman, you’d have liked her—and then I had Donna, and Martha, and good old Jack—actually I’m surprised how long it’s been since I’ve seen him, he’d get a kick out of my new look—and of course Rose, and Mickey came too once in a while, and Charlie, and Lucy, and Grace—”

“Yes, I do believe I get the picture, thank you,” Yana interjected, his head spinning from the run-on sentence. He couldn’t quite put a finger on why, but something about the endless parade of her once and former friends left him irritable. “Some might even say too many friends.”

The Doctor’s mouth gaped, almost offended, before she smiled wide. “Aw, no need to be jealous Ian, you’re on the list too! Right at the front actually, seeing as how you’re my newest friend. Not the first Ian I’ve had around though.”

Friends? Was he really her friend? Heavens, how pathetic that his heart actually sped up at the concept. Yana sincerely needed to get a hold of himself, or possibly just a good night’s sleep.

Blessedly, the Doctor had continued prattling on without waiting for him to comment, unaware that such a simple announcement had affected him so. “I’ve been lucky with companions. Not just with companions, I’ve met loads of incredible people. Shakespeare, Rosa Parks, Dickens, Churchill, Van Gogh—and those are just the recent ones on Earth!” Here she paused, breath held as though she was choosing her next words carefully. “Have…you ever been to Earth?”

“Hmm?” Yana looked up from where he’d been doodling on his own notepad for the past several minutes as she’d continued to speak. At risk of sounding rude, there was a deep pleasantness in zoning out and allowing the Doctor’s voice to become a soothing background hum, as she rambled through absurd stories and fantastical figures.

Her hands were clasped in her lap, fidgeting. “It’s just, I feel like we’ve met before. Don’t you? And, knowing myself, that’s likely to have been on Earth, particularly since you’re a human…I think. You are human, right?”

“As far as I’m aware,” Yana answered truthfully, with some amusement.

“Right!...So?”

“So what?”

“So where have we met?” she pressed, staring directly into the camera now. “It’s been bothering me since yesterday, I just can’t put my finger on it!”

Yana agreed, not that he’d expected her to share his sentiment by any means. But it was undeniably validating that she felt their rapport to be as strong and instantaneous as he’d noted himself. “Well, I haven’t been to—what did you call it, Earth? But I do agree that you seem familiar to me somehow.”

She looked crestfallen for a moment, but recovered swiftly. “How about on Agora? Pandatorea? Sirius IV? Carsus—oh, you’d love the library there, but then I hope we didn’t meet on Carsus because I was a bit of a mess back then, and I’d hate for that to have been our first meeting. Have you been a guest on the Oodsphere—?”

“Doctor, familiar as you might seem to me, I don’t actually believe we’ve met before,” Yana cut her off again, stemming her flow before it could gain velocity. “Rest assured, I’d have remembered you if I had.” Immediately after saying it he cursed himself for having revealed too much, for how much transparent interest such a statement carried. Already, he could see that the Doctor looked surprised by the statement, and there was a funny half-smile playing at her mouth; one that looked far too knowing. He pressed on, determined to divert them from the topic. “Besides, much as I hate to take the wind out of your fairytales, I do think you’re forgetting that most of the planets you’re listing have burned up and died. Their names are familiar in an academic sense, but I’m eons too late to have visited any of those.”

“Burned up and died?!” the Doctor yelped like Yana was telling her the impossible, rather than something that had been old news for at least a thousand years. “But that’s—ohh, the incarceration time treaty, how’d I forget?”

“Pardon?”

The Doctor stared into the camera for a long while, and, despite all impossibility, Yana felt as though he could feel her eyes on him, scrutinizing him. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. I really shouldn’t, because if you haven’t heard of the incarceration time treaty, then you’re probably not supposed to hear about it. But seeing as we’re friends and all…”

There was that curious, lovely word again.

She stood, resuming her circling of the room as she spoke. “Judoon megaprisons hold the universe’s worst criminals. Not just their own people, as you might have noticed.” Here she paused with a comedic flourish down at her own person. “Much as the Judoon might have been happy to do this out of the goodness of their cardiac bypass systems, most of the galaxy’s biggest players decided to give them payment for incarcerating the worst of their peoples. Some gave funds, some gave supplies deals, the Sontarans even gave them a heap of torture weapons, if you can believe it. But my people—” her pacing stopped, with her back towards him as she stared down her wall of sketchwork. From the limited view he had over her shoulder, Yana could just about see a stencil of a fantastical city, one with ornate buildings and arching hillsides, all contained within a protective arial dome. “My people gave them time,” she continued finally. “Not in any real way, mind you. The temporal programming they donated would be your equivalent of the engineering required to build a child’s toy spaceship. But they ensured that for extra security, each megaprison would jump through time at scheduled intervals to a pre-determined point. It deters escape attempts even further, you know? Knowing you’re not just thousands of lightyears away from home, you’re thousands of millennia away.”

Now she truly must be lying to him. “You’re talking about time travel,” Yana began incredulously.

“I’m always talking about time travel.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Really?” she said, wandering back towards the camera before plonking herself down on the floor with her hands under her chin, legs crossed. “Then tell me this Ian, man of the people, well-travelled as you are. Have you ever heard of a Judoon megaprison like this before? Ever heard any stories of one, or seen one?”

He…hadn’t. He’d noted as much upon boarding the thing, hadn’t he? “No,” he admitted finally, a few seconds of consideration later. “I dare say I haven’t.”

The Doctor smiled. “See? We must have only arrived in your time recently. And I guarantee you, in a little over one of your years, this whole thing will disappear again.”

The entire idea was ridiculous. However, something deep within Yana’s bones argued that she didn’t look as though she was lying. “If you’re right, then…why, that’s a marvelous feat of engineering. I wonder if I—”

“Oh, don’t,” she interjected with a small laugh. “Scientist that you are, I can hear the gears turning in your brain all the way from here. But don’t try and think about the fuel schematics, or whether you can replicate a similar device in the outside world. The treaty was purposefully designed to give non-gallifreyans a killer headache if they think about it too long.”

Yana scowled, withdrawing his hands from where they’d already risen to rub at his temples involuntarily. “Absurd,” he sniffed, for good measure. On the camera, the Doctor just gave a small shrug in apology. Carefully keeping his mind away from technical feasibility, he considered the idea more broadly. A tiny, selfish part of him whispered that, if she was telling the truth, it would be an enormous loss.

That would mean that in a little over a year, the Doctor will be entirely gone from his universe, as though she never existed.

He banished the thought with a wave of self-chastisement, only to have it replaced by a more selfless realization that was equally chilling. “If you’re telling the truth, that means you might never get back to your own time.”

“No worries there—time is my time,” she said nonsensically. But there was an edge behind her words, and her eyes held a sliver of doubt. “As soon as I get out of here, I’ll find a way to get back to my own ship—or she’ll find me, sometimes that happens, and I’ll go back to my friends good as new.”

Baffled once more, Yana couldn’t help but snort. “Of course, you have a time-travelling ship as well, how did I not guess?”

“Huge oversight on your part.” He was glad to see the tension had melted from her face, returning to its baseline pleasant confidence once more. “Out of curiosity, what year are we in then?”

“Using the Galactic Standard, it’s…” Yana thought for a moment. “I suppose we’ve just passed into the 99,999,999,999,970^th year. Just a week ago, now that I think of it. Happy new year.”

She didn’t respond. He turned back to the camera from where he’d been eyeing the walls trying to recall the date, only to see that she’d caught her breath, frozen on the spot.

“Doctor?”

“The year 99,999,999,999,970, but that’s…we’re almost at the end of the universe,” she murmured apprehensively.

Yana frowned, an unnamable twist in the pit of his stomach. “Well, it does feel like that sometimes,” he admitted, “but pessimism won’t get us anywhere. I choose to believe that the universe won’t end, simply because I won’t let it.”

The Doctor’s lips turned up at that, but it was a sad flicker of a smile that didn’t match the rest of her face. She looked as though she desperately wanted to say more on the subject, but had bitten her own tongue in order to reign herself in. Against the ominous silence that followed, Yana found himself missing her earlier rambling with an ache. “The incarceration time treaty stretches all the way until the end of the universe, who’d have thought…” she intoned, and her eyes got that far away look Yana had come to dislike. “Still though, at least that explains why they have over seven thousand crimes attributed to me. If we’re counting all of time and space, that’s probably fair.”

They remained wordless for the rest of the shift; the Doctor, still on the floor with her gaze fixed on her shoes, and Yana, equally troubled, trying his hardest not to feel the dread that comes with a time-traveler telling you, in no uncertain terms, that your universe is coming to an end.

***

Day 4

***

Yana hurried down the long hallway, shuffling the tin of food from hand to hand as he freed up his finger for the biometric lock, having already gotten used to the pinprick of pain that accompanied the pulse of green light as the door opened. He was late! And incredibly embarrassed about it as well. Yana loathed being late, despite how often it seemed to happen to him.

Sometimes he swore his own internal sense of time had been tampered with, like a computer program with a particularly irksome bug.

He sped into the booth, pausing only for a moment to turn on the microphone. “Apologies for the delay Doctor, I’ll be there momentarily.” He didn’t even glance at the screen, instead speeding straight through the door that led to their conjoining hallway before placing the food through the flap. He sighed, finally taking a moment to breathe, before he paused again. Tentatively, he cracked open the food flap and directed his speech through it. “I really do apologize, I know it’s uncalled for to be late when I’m the one supplying your food.”

With the flap half-open, he hoped that his voice would carry beyond the reinforced cladding of the hallway and into the prison cell. His hopes were validated when a moment later he heard uneven footsteps approach, and the sound of the metal tin being lifted from its reception platform. “S’no prob’lm. Thank’sIan.” Her voice sounded quiet, despite knowing that without the wall between them, she’d be standing a mere meter away.

More importantly, her voice sounded wrong.

Yana’s heart began pounding again, this time not from exertion. “Doctor? Are you alright?”

“M’fine!”

Even without the camera footage, that was clearly a lie. Still, Yana turned quickly and strode back into the booth, turning on the video feed immediately. His breath caught as he watched the Doctor limp back towards the bed, food clasped in one hand, and pinching the bridge of her nose to stop a substantial nosebleed with the other. Upon reaching the bed she let out a pained huff as she sat back down, and the new angle gave him a clear view of her face, fresh black-eye and all.

“You look a far cry from fine,” he replied stonily.

“Oi! An here’Ithough’you’ere polite—”

“Doctor, what happened?”

“Gimmea’minute. Need to stop’thbleed’ig.”

Yana remained quiet for a moment, feeling inexplicably agitated as he watched her breath through the pain and continue pinching her nose. “You should really be pinching your nose and tilting your head downwards, not upwards. Honestly, and you call yourself a doctor.” 

She glared at the camera, but a moment later her face was tilted down. The new vantage point let Yana survey the top of her head for any injuries, but he didn’t spot any blood or injuries amongst the messy blonde strands. No head impacts at very least, thank the stars for small miracles…

Five minutes later and the blood stopped oozing. She limped stiffly over to the sink and took the opportunity to dab at the dried blood around her mouth, careful not to restart the flow.

“Well?”

The Doctor paused her washing with a sigh. “They’ve started giving me morning yard time.” She tilted her head, indicating towards a seam in the cell wall that he’d previously overlooked; one that could only be a door to the shared prison yard. “It’s supposed to be a privilege, I think, for my ‘good behavior’.” He could almost hear the air quotes she ladened around the words, thick with scorn.

“And you took the opportunity to make new friends?”

“Worse, ran into someone I’d already met.” She was scrunching her nose now and wincing, as though testing to ensure nothing was out of place. “A Sycorax. I killed his father in a duel, once, ages ago. Doesn’t seem to have won me any favours with him.”

“I’d wager it didn’t.” The Doctor made her way back over towards the bed again, and as she circled closer towards the camera, Yana could see what appeared to be large finger-shaped bruises around her neck. She’d been throttled?! Immediately, he felt a baffling pulse of anger threaten to overwhelm him, outrageously inappropriate and uncalled for as it was. He couldn’t stop a trace of venom from leaking into his tone. “Any more old friends you plan on running into in prison?”

She frowned, shooting the camera a sharp look. “Probably, seeing as I’m the reason dozens of them wound up here in the first place. But the good news is that most of them wouldn’t recognise me anyway, not with this new face. So, as long as no one goes around spreading word that the Doctor is here…”

Yana was far from reassured. “From the sound of it, I wouldn’t put it past your Sicorax to do just that.”

“Yeah,” she agreed glumly. “Then again, I knocked him unconscious with his own boot, so that should give me at least a day or two of anonymity until he comes around.”

“Delightful. How nice for your inevitable death to wait for the weekend.”

She looked thoroughly put-out now. “Hey!” she shot back, “I don’t know why you’re biting my head off about it, what was I supposed to do?”

Kill him, came a snide hiss from the back of Yana’s mind, so immediate and startling of a response that his hand lurched back from the microphone button. You should have killed him so there was no one left to spread word of your name. You should have killed him just for touching you. Idiot.

Yana’s heart was pounding. And just what had he meant by thinking that?? He sat still as though waiting for something, though he didn’t know precisely what. Possibly to have a stroke, or pass out, or suffer some other physical symptomology that could explain having such unusual thoughts. As he’d done the day before, he glanced at his own reflection in the plexiglass, half expecting to see someone other than himself staring back at him. Unthinkingly, Yana dipped his fingers into his pocket to feel for his pocket watch, stroking it for comfort.

“…Are you still there?”

His finger returned to the microphone. “Yes—sorry, yes of course I am.” He wasn’t sure how long he’d lingered there in silence, waiting for the unknowable to occur, but apparently it had been long enough for the Doctor to grow worried. “Furthermore, I sincerely apologize for my tone. Of course you’re doing all that you can to protect yourself, and it sounds as though you handled the situation as best as one could, given the circumstances.”

She softened, however she didn’t appear fully assuaged. “Are you alright Ian? You don’t seem yourself.”

“I’m fine,” Yana insisted, waving his hand as though dismissing the question, even though he knew the Doctor wouldn’t be able to see it (on second thought, maybe it was himself he was reassuring). “I’m just tired, I had a sleepless night. Bad dreams, infantile as that might sound. Dreams about war zones, planets burning up, the faces on the bodies that were left behind, the conversations with their families, and—well, you know how it is.”

If he’d thought her eyes looked old before, now they appeared positively ancient. “Yeah. I do know,” she replied quietly. “I don’t think that’s infantile at all.”

Something in the conviction of her words reassured Yana that it wasn’t a platitude; she really did understand. Her response wasn’t born out of sympathy, but from a bones-deep level of commiseration that was impossible to find these days. It tempted him to share more—to be seen all the further. He wanted to confess that it wasn’t even the violence of his dreams that had shaken him, but their unfamiliarity. Namely, that although he’d seen his fair share of battlefields, his dreams seemed to take place on planets he’d never visited, with weapons and creatures as fantastical and terrible as the Doctor’s own fairytales.

Planets atomised in an instant. Tin-pot aliens flying through the sky, soldiers writhing on the ground as their bodies flickered and changed. Time itself cracking, destroying life in ways he’d never imagined. He wanted to tell her how he’d woken up in a cold sweat, his trigger finger poised, and his palm still tingling with the sensation of cold metal under its grasp.

But the Doctor had had a trying enough morning all on her own; the last think she needed was to play his confessor. So, Yana said nothing further on the topic. “More importantly, how are you?” he said, switching focus. “How are you really? I’m not the one of us who’s had the tougher morning.”

“I’m fine,” the Doctor protested, parroting his own response.

“Doctor.”

“I mean it! Right as rain, couldn’t be better. I’m…” she fell quiet, staring at her hands for a moment, as though considering.

Yana waited.

“Honestly?” The Doctor looked up, and there was something rawer in her expression than he’d ever seen. “I’m not fine. I’m…worried. One rogue Sycorax is the least of my problems, but I don’t know what’ll happen if word gets out that I’m here. And I can’t die here; I can’t do that to my fam—to any of my friends! And my face aches, and I’ve sprained my ankle something fierce, which is going to slow me down for days! And I’m starving for real food, eating’s always felt like a chore before, but now I’d kill for something as simple as chips!”

“I’m sorry,” Yana said, surprising himself with how genuinely he meant it.

But she wasn’t finished. “And I’m bored!” she groaned the word out like it was of greater insult than pain or confinement. “These last few days, I think you’re the only thing that’s been keeping me sane, but I’ve been in here for years already. And I’m used to having so much more—I’m used to having everything at my fingertips, every planet, all of time itself! I miss freedom. And I miss my TARDIS so, so much!”

Yana didn’t have a clue what a ‘TARDIS’ was, but clearly it meant a lot to her, with the way she clenched her fingers around the tin of food (still untouched) as she said it.

“And you know what? The worst part is, I don’t even really care about any of that, or not as much as I should!” she cried out, jumping up from the bed to pace, despite her ankle. “Because I can’t! I’m too busy being forced to think about how Gallifrey is gone, again, and how my own identity has been called into question, and how whole lifetimes of mine have been taken from me—and I haven’t had time to grieve any of it! I wasn’t even done the decency of being told why! And it’s all because of HIM!” Yana flinched as she punctuated the last word by throwing the tin of food at the wall with shocking force. It exploded with a clatter, chipping the concrete wall as it fell.

Yana had questions. A great many questions, but none of them seemed particularly kind or safe to ask, at least not while the Doctor still stood panting with rage, grief-stricken and staring unseeingly through the wall. “I…I really do hope your freedom is returned to you, one day.” It was a pathetically paltry statement to offer, but in the face of all the strange and terrible things she’d listed, it seemed like the safest comment.

The Doctor sighed again, slumping as though the air had been drained from the bases of her lungs. “Mine’s a life sentence, mate.” Forgoing the bed, she lowered herself to the floor where she stood, wrapping her arms around her knees.

In that moment, she looked painfully small. “It doesn’t seem fair,” Yana replied, almost petulantly, before he could consider the words. And yet, despite knowing some of the crimes for which she’d been accused, he firmly believed it.

She snorted. “Daring to question the legal system, are we?”

“Yes,” he said, emphatically.

She was smiling again, some progress made. “Good. I like a rebel.”

There she went again, saying things that had Yana caught between preening and feeling affronted. “It’s not that I don’t believe in a judicial system, or the benefits of law,” he added quickly. “And I’ve seen your crimes list—or a sample of it, I understand the full list would be quite a long read. But people are flawed, and mistakes are only natural. Outcomes differ significantly from intensions, and I truly believe that your intensions were good. Are good.”

Her face flashed with something like surprise, and no little gratefulness. “You really think that?”

“I do,” he affirmed immediately, glad to have brought some relief to her sorrow. “If I was in charge, I’d forgive you.”

The Doctor sat there a moment longer, digesting his words, and a fraction of her previous sorrow returned to her face. “That makes one of us…” she whispered, speaking more to herself than Yana. But before he could pry further, she was rising again and dusting herself off with renewed vigour. “Thank you, Ian—I mean it. You give a killer pep-talk.” She strode towards her wall of sketches, pausing near the camera to give it a look. “At this rate, if I do manage to get out of here, I might just have to take you with me.”

Yana let himself fantasize, but only for a moment. Flying around with the Doctor in her fantastical time-travelling contraption, exploring the planets from her stories. No more dying universe, no more scrounging to survive. Just them, and all of time and space. “If you did, I just might have to say yes,” he replied quietly.

Her face was already half-turned away from him, humming to herself with fingers that were already chalk-stained and fast at work on the newest of her drawings. But he could swear her smile had widened.

***

Day 5

***

His dreams weren’t always nightmares. Sometimes he dreamed about endless fields of red grass, so real he could feel the heat of the suns on his back, and the prickle of stones and leaves under his feet as he ran. He dreamed he wasn’t alone—in these dreams, he was never alone. He was young, and he was old, but not always in that order. And there was someone there, omnipresent, always next to him—even when he wasn’t, yet despite the exquisite lucidity of his dreaming he never did manage to picture his companion’s face. Or perhaps he did, but the faces kept changing, and they all blurred together into a single mercurial entity he could only identify as ‘familiar’ and ‘his’. In these, the very best of his dreams, nothing happened at all. They simply laid naked together on the red grass watching the suns go down with growing anticipation, because both knew that the real show would begin with nightfall and the return of the stars. Yana would wake up with tears in his eyes after these nights, wanting nothing more than to sleep forever, if only it would return him to the field of his dreams.

…Then again, on other nights he dreamed he was a murderous ectoplasmic snake. So, he supposed they couldn’t all be winners.

***

Yana made doubly sure to arrive early the following morning, half in penance for the previous day, and half in fear of what condition he might find the Doctor in. He turned on the video feed before alerting her of his presence, inordinately relieved to find her uninjured—or at least, not injured further. But he was less relieved to see that she looked more worried and agitated than ever.

“And how did this morning’s yard time go?” he asked, once he’d given her the food and returned to his booth.

“Oh, fine—well, no, not really. I mean it was fine. Kind of,” she replied disjointedly, coming a hand through her hair as she paced circles into the floor. “I don’t think the Sicorax is out of the medbay yet, but you’ll be pleased to know I kept a low profile just in case. No more fights.”

“You don’t seem to have any further injuries,” Yana acknowledge approvingly, before squinting. “Come to think of it, you’ve healed even yesterday’s injuries remarkably well.”

“That’s gallifreyan biology for you.” Another agitated pass of her fingers through tangled hair.

She might not be injured, but Yana was far from blind. “And yet,” he continued, leaning in to speak lowly into the microphone, “you appear more agitated than you did yesterday after having fought for your life. Why’s that?”

“Lay off, will you?” she snapped, uncharacteristically hostile as she shot the camera a look. “I said I’m fine, no need to worry your little guard head over it, your prisoner won’t be causing a ruckus or looking for something sharp anytime soon.”

Yana’s mouth flapped open, feeling wounded by her sudden cruelty. But he was saved from having to come up with a dignified response as the Doctor’s eyes widened, registering her own words.

“That was uncalled for, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense.”

“None taken,” Yana replied stiffly.

She stopped circling, but her hands were still tearing absently at her hair. “It’s just—you’re infuriating, you know?” she continued, and Yana went right back to feeling affronted. “No, not like that, not in the way you’re thinking—it’s because you’re so easy to talk to. Too easy! So, it’s far too easy for me to forget that you’re my prison guard, and that I really shouldn’t be telling you anything.”

She was right, but that didn’t stop him from feeling offended. “I thought you considered us friends,” Yana said lowly, aware that it was an unforgivably manipulative move.

She made a noise like a hurt animal, and her expression was both crushed and guilty. “I do,” she urged, eyes imploring as they turned towards the camera again. “That’s the problem! It’s just that usually with friends, with the fam, I can tell them anything—or, not anything, but enough that it helps. I’m like that sometimes, I need to say my thoughts out loud to someone else before I can really process them.”

He’d noticed that, much as he’d grudgingly decided it was equally as endearing as it was irritating. “I…understand,” he said, surprising them both. “Quite right too. I suppose here I should ply you with phrases like ‘you can trust me’ and ‘your secrets are safe with me’, but the truth of the matter is that you have good reason to be cautious. This room, our conversations, I’m sure they’re all recorded, although I sincerely doubt any Judoon would watch the tapes barring an emergency. At the heart of it, I prefer you vigilant, more than I prioritize your candidness towards me.”

The Doctor had paused her fidgeting as he spoke, and by the end of it she looked notably relieved. “Thank you for understanding,” she sighed, returning cross-legged to the floor as she’d done so often. However, Yana could still see she appeared troubled. And, almost...disappointed, as though some part of her had hoped that he’d force her hand.

She’d wanted to tell him the truth. She just wanted him to know why it was a bad idea before doing it.

His heart swelled with pride at the idea. “However…” he began slowly, watching as her attention perked back up. “I’ve been enjoying your stories. Perhaps you could tell me another—a fabrication, as usual—about that friend of yours who was having a bad day in prison?”

Her mouth bobbed open, head tilted in confusion before she understood his meaning and smiled, all teeth and rebellious glee. “My friend, of course,” she replied quickly, scooting closer to the camera. “So, this friend of mine, lovely woman, she found herself in jail and in a bit of a pickle.”

“What sort?”

She leaned in, conspiratorially. “Well, she was laying low in the yard one morning, and she overheard other prisoners whispering about a plan for a jailbreak. Soon, in only a couple of days from now—err, from when she was in prison.”

Yana grimaced praying that if any Judoon were watching, that they had as little understanding of subtlety as the Doctor did of acting.

“—Anyway, apparently one of the others had been tipped off that there would be a power surge in the morning, during which time the locks would be shorted out. Just for a brief window, maybe three minutes, max. Scores of them, maybe hundreds of prisoners, they’re all going to burst through the doors and make a break for the teleporters. Hell, most of them will probably kill each other fighting to get to it before it’s too late, but some are sure to make it.”

Yana’s heart stopped. “That sounds…” terrible! The Doctor would surely be amongst those who’d make it, and then she’d be gone. And Yana would still be here, wasting away and alone! “…Incredible,” he finished, biting back his own bitterness. “If not significantly risky. I’d ask your friend to be careful.”

She gave a single chuckle, anxiously. “You don’t know the half of it,” she admitted, and her hand was back in her hair. “To escape—no, even for a chance at escaping—she’d have to go through the yard like the other prisoners. And, not only was her cell one of the furthest away from the transporter, she’d also made quite a few enemies within the prison. Ones who might choose to use a camera-less power outage to settle old scores, rather than risking an escape.”

If Yana had thought his heart was heavy before, it was nothing compared to how his blood ran cold now. “That’s suicidal,” he said finally, unable to keep the panic out of his voice. “Your friend would have to be mad to try it. There has got to be a better way for y—her, to make her escape. There will be, this simply isn’t the right time!”

“But she has to try,” she said, her tone ragged. “She can’t stay here forever. It’ll kill her eventually; it’s killing her a little more every day.”

“But getting surrounded by a hoard of enemies will kill her, there’s no ‘eventually’ about it,” he snapped back desperately.

She shrugged, visibly conflicted and unable to argue the point. “Yeah,” she said forlornly. “It might. Hence the dilemma.”

Silence. They both lingered there, allowing the other to remain lost in their thoughts. On the wall beside him, the clock ticked away the seconds of his shift, and Yana wasn’t sure it had ever sounded louder. “So, how does your story end,” he murmured finally, attempting to keep his voice neutral. “Your friend, does she risk it all to try for her escape?”

The Doctor’s head lifted from where she’d let it fall onto her hands. “Good question,” she said, her expression entirely unreadable. “I haven’t gotten that far in the story yet. I don’t think she’s made up her mind.” She lowered her head back down after that, her brow furrowing as she studied the floor.

Yana took his finger from the microphone button for a moment and sat back, staring at the ceiling as he tried to unpack his own feelings on the matter. Like it or not, there would be a good chance the Doctor would be gone from him in a matter of days, either disappeared into the stars, or worse. It made the selfish part of him want to claw at the walls. Although he liked to think it was because she was the only source of interest within these intellectually-impoverished walls (which was true) he feared it went deeper than that. If he were honest, now that he’d met the Doctor, it was as though he couldn’t quite stomach the idea of a cosmos without her.

“Your turn.”

Yana was pulled from his brooding to find the Doctor looking directly at the camera, cross-legged with her chin perched on her fists. “I’m sick of my own stories,” she added. “Too many consequences, and never enough happy endings. So, it’s your turn to tell me some of yours.”

“Mine?” Yana felt suddenly shy, as he wracked his brains for something worthwhile. “I daresay most of mine are gloomy as well. And I certainly don’t have any as impressive as your own.”

“But I don’t want impressive, that’s the point,” she pressed, her eyes more solemn than her tone as she regarded him through the screen. “I want mundane. I miss mundane, I haven’t had it in over a decade—or maybe ever. But more than that I just need a distraction.”

“I really don’t think—”

“Please, Ian.”

Yana’s brain sputtered, unable to come up with an excuse in the face of such an earnest request. So instead, with a clear of his throat, he told her about what he had for dinner. Ghastly stuff, and he’d had for days now, ever since he’d boarded the megaprison. And he told her about the prison guard in the bunk next to his who he had taken to uncharitably calling ‘thumb’ because of his unfortunate lack of neck definition, and my how the creature snored! Then he went back further and told her about how he’d made it to Judoonia in the first place, about how he had watched with infinite sadness as Verssa-three crumbled under the solar storms. From a small window on the freighter, he’d witnessed his own apartment—cramped, but kept in immaculate shape with infinite care—as it had caught alight. And then he spoke more broadly about the refugee camps he had visited, the ones that seemed to grow more numerous by the day as more planets collapsed, and how at each he’d tried his best to help people—whether as a medic, or an engineer, or a botanist, or even a cook—but how each time it felt as though he was but a thimble of water tasked with extinguishing an inferno of misery.

Throughout his tales the Doctor occasionally chimed in, asking questions and adding laughter where appropriate, and tsking with commiseration where it wasn’t. But mostly she just sat there and listened with a look of rapt interest on her face, and this time, when her eyes faded far away from the walls of her cell, Yana didn’t feel as though she’d gone where he couldn’t follow. It felt as though she’d gone with him, and they were walking side by side through the tumult of his past.

By the time his words petered off, he was astonished to find it was already nightfall. The Doctor looked surprised too, and he took no little pride in having disrupted what she assured him was her flawless grasp on time. She looked calmer as he departed, as though he’d taken her thoughts far from dangerous notions of escape. Yana felt accomplished for that, like he’d finally done something worthwhile with his day.

And yet, as he departed from his booth and headed down the hall, he counted the seconds. All the way until he reached the transport hub by the security desk, allowing his eyes to dart towards the transporter pads for the briefest moment.

Only one hundred and twenty-eight seconds. Far less than three minutes, all things considered.

***

Day 6

***

She was hard at work on her sketches again. Yana enjoyed watching her work, especially if it distracted them from further discussion regarding her escape.

(Even if she was, as he’d said many times before, quite insane.)

“You did not seriously meet the devil. The devil?!”

“Did too,” the Doctor retorted cheerfully as she put smudged final touches of shading on her scene. In front of her was a scene that was equal parts stunning and terrifying: a giant demonic biped at the base of a pit, snarling and chained, its claws inches from snapping at a thin man standing on a cliff aside him. “That’s me right there,” she pointed.

He glanced at the man, then back at her, before deciding it was amongst the lesser of the strange things she’d said all week, and didn’t merit pursuing. Instead, Yana’s attention turned to a portrait alongside the scene, of a frightfully young women whose blonde hair and vibrant eyes had been drawn with obvious care. “She’s beautiful. Is that you as well?”

Her smile grew fond. “Rose,” she said by way of explanation, stepping back from her art. “Definitely not me, she was far better than I’ll ever be. And she was beautiful.”

‘Was’, not ‘is’. That explained the melancholy with which she said it, and the wistfulness with which she was still gazing at the image. Yana’s stomach twinged, oddly put out by the sight. “A bit young for you though, isn’t she? As a lover?”

The Doctor blanched before reddening, clearly called out. “No! We weren’t—she and I were just…” she trailed off before laughing, with self-deprecation. “Okay, I deserve that, that’s probably fair.” She paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. “Then again, I’m far older than I look. Nearly everyone is too young for me.” But she moved on from the portrait with a final emotive glance, and the twisting in Yana’s gut subsided a little.

She was scrutinizing her art as she walked, all those snapshots of people and places she’d clearly loved dearly, and Yana couldn’t help but ask it: “Do you often fall in love the friends you take on these adventures?”

She looked scandalized for a moment before thinking it over, continuing her stroll. “I love them all,” she admitted, eyes still roving the images. “All of them were incredible—are still incredible. They were incredible before I met them, and they’ll keep being incredible well after I’m gone.”

It was a diplomatic non-answer, and an obvious side-stepping of his question. If Yana were being polite, he’d allow her her evasions and move on, but...he was feeling uncharacteristically impolite. “That’s not quite what I meant.”

She smiled. “I know.” She walked further still, briefly pausing to reach out and stroke the face of another friend, one of her ‘fam’ she’d called Yaz. “Sometimes, but not often,” she admitted finally. “And when I do, it rarely lasts long. In all honestly, I don’t do the kind of love you’re implying all that often. My life isn’t built for it. And besides, my kind live far longer than humans, which becomes a little unfair.”

He watched her fingers as they brushed the portrait, feeling a strange sort of intensity. “You never considered marriage? Partnership?”

She laughed then, surprising them both with its force. “I’ve been married so many times that I’ve actually lost count—ugh, that makes me sound like such a cad!”

It did, a little.

“But most of that happened by accident,” she continued, tilting her head thoughtfully. “You’d be surprised how often a last-minute marriage can get you out of a tight spot. I’ve rarely ever married for anything like love.”

The idea fit nicely alongside the numerous other ridiculous things she’d said that day. “I take it all these great loves are featured on your wall here?” Yana’s voice still sounded a little wrong to his own ears as he said it, and he could only hope she hadn’t noticed.

She scanned the wall, which must have featured over a hundred different faces, some prominent in the foreground, others faded into the scenery. “Most of them,” she murmured, her eyes lingering as they passed over yet another offensively young humanoid. A male this time, wearing a kilt and a jaunty expression, captured mid-sprint. But there was an edge to her voice that Yana couldn’t help but pick up on.

“Most, but not all?”

The Doctor didn’t answer him at all this time, which was…unusual. No jokes, nor any verbal evasions. She’d simply stopped, and was now staring at the pictures strangely, as though she were looking into the gaps between them rather than at them.

Unwilling to let the topic go, he tried another approach. “You say ‘your kind’ live longer than humans. Did you never think of taking a partner from your own species in that case? Might have made for a more appropriate travel companion.”

“Tried that too.”

Short, sharp, and clearly laden with a request that Yana not question the topic any further. But for reasons beyond his understanding, a part of his brain was urging him to push for more information, as though it were a starving creature that could feed on this very topic alone. Which one are they—?”

“They’re not here,” she cut him off, even sharper than before. But her eyes had fallen back on the picture of the city under the dome.

“Really?” Yana questioned, skeptical and slightly sharp-toned himself. “Amongst all these sketches, this individual didn’t bear drawing even the once?” This was the same Doctor who had spent an hour drawing someone she claimed to be herself getting stabbed! And another hour drawing what she described as blobs of sentient fat, flying through the sky! Clearly, she had plenty of time to draw both the unpleasant and the unimportant, so neglecting to draw a figure who clearly held such importance to her seemed like a glaring omission.

“Some things aren’t worth the effort!” she snapped finally, the words reverberating off her cell walls as her demeanor flipped in an instant, although Yana could tell that her anger wasn’t fully addressed at him. “…Some things, some people, are too painful see,” she finished, quietly this time, her words heavy with hurt.

Yana watched her, panting and flushed with emotion as her eyes traced the wall. “Will you show me?” he murmured, unnaturally transfixed.

She froze, breaking her staring contest with the wall to turn back to the camera, visibly surprised and affronted by the request. But that look in her eyes from the day before had returned; the one that implored him for an excuse to do something she’d been barely holding back from doing herself. Wordlessly, she nodded.

And then Yana lost her to the wall.

The Doctor started slow, with methodical, almost academic strokes detailing the outline of a figure. A man with dark, clever features began to appear, and she smeared away bits of charcoal to pepper grey into his hair and neat beard. An age-appropriate lover, at last. His mouth was shut, and she’d drawn him alone and motionless, yet still the portrait appeared almost expectant, as though he were communing with someone off-scene, and there was a question playing around his lips.

The man was handsome, distinguished and intriguing. The portrait satisfied something within Yana that he couldn’t even begin to unravel. “Thank y—”

“Shh,” she interrupted, almost without thinking about it as she looked over the imagine. She moved as though she were on autopilot, finding another blank spot on her canvas, and then she was starting again. A new figure began to emerge, bearing similarities to the last. More dark hair, more dark clothing, same beard—though without the grey this time. There was ornate detailing on this new figure’s lapels that Yana couldn’t quite make out from the camera’s limited view, but he could see that she’d drawn him with a different demeanor than the first. There was a slight cruelty to his mouth, at odds with the humorous tilt she’d given his head, and there was something about his eyes that seemed all too alive.

Inexplicably, Yana knew it was the same person. Different, yet fundamentally similar.

This time he didn’t even get the chance to comment before she was off again, and suddenly there was no stopping her. There was a manic intensity in her eyes as she jumped from gap to gap between the other sketches, filling each with what could only be the same person in many forms, some even poised amongst full backdrops of imagery. There were two young boys sitting together on a hill, overlooking the stars. Then there was a tall figure with snakelike pupils wearing an opulent robe, choking the life out of another figure with wavy hair. There was a male slightly younger than Yana’s own age drawn mad with glee and fury, and the Doctor nearly broke her chalk with vigor as she drew him dancing around the hall of a great ship, his weapon raised.

“Doctor—” Yana tried softly but she only shook her head, even as her arm began to tremble.

“I never quite get it right…” she gritted out, and he knew he was speaking about something far deeper than art. She drew the same man again but left the hair lighter this time, before shaking her head and snarling as she smudged it out, turning it grey.

Scene after scene of this same figure began taking form, until it didn’t appear as though it were multiple drawings at all. Rather, they all blended together into one continuous form, weaving between the other sketches of friends and adventures like a dark snake, both tying it all together and choking out every inch of free space. The Doctor managed to hold back the worst of her emotions until she was finishing the touches on another portrait; female this time, but unmistakably the same individual, with that same edge of cruelty and vibrant expectancy that had been absent from previous drawings of friends and foes. By the time she was finishing the details on the woman’s intricately pinned hair, tears had begun flowing freely down the Doctor’s cheeks.

“Are y—?”

“Ahhh!” she cried out, unable to contain a building scream as she started on the last of her portraits. She didn’t draw, so much as she slashed lines onto the wall as though she was wielding a sword rather than charcoal. Thick dark hair emerged, a young face, dark skin and features, sketched into a rough depiction of a three-piece suit and long jacket. She assailed the wall with her chalk again before it finally broke, at which time she threw the nubs to the ground and began attacking it with soot-stained fingertips. She smudged and smeared until the figure was laughing, with the hollowest eyes Yana had ever seen, and she surrounded him in flames—

“Doctor, take a breath!”

All at once she dropped her hands from the wall, shaking, and a moment later she sunk to the floor. Yana’s own heart was pounding at twice its normal rate as he took in the narrative tapestry of new images that engulfed all four walls; a weaving plethora of pictures that told a singular story. Why, she must’ve drawn more than fifty of them within the past few hours! All penned with exquisite detail, and every line positively teeming with untethered agony and affection.

That strange, foreign part of Yana’s mind that had asked for this was quiet now, although he wasn’t sure if he felt more horrified or appeased. “I’m…sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for asking, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

She hadn’t specifically said that she’d lost anything, but the despair behind her eyes told him all he needed to know. “Don’t be,” she whispered, her voice ragged as though she’d spent the past several hours screaming. “I needed that, I think. It’s probably cathartic.” But she looked achingly miserable as she’d said it, as though she’d used her very lifeforce in bringing the figure on the wall to life, and she now had nothing left to sustain herself.

Yana felt compelled to do something about that. An irrational part of him imagined what would happen if he were to lift the glass cover from the cell’s emergency button and release her now. A Judoon squadron would certainly come running, but at very least there would be time to give her a hug. He smiled slightly. It was a lovely fantasy, but he supposed something more mundane would do instead. “Can you come closer to the food flap?”

He watched her glance up in confusion, ensuring she complied before rising from the booth and walking towards their dividing hallway. He spared a brief, amused thought for the fear he’d had whilst stepping towards her cell only days before, so different when compared to what he felt now. Yana felt a little silly as he sat down next to her cell door, alone in the iron-clad silence of the hall, but he wasn’t to be deterred. For all he knew this wouldn’t work anyway, the flap might be too small, or it might set off an alert if any organic matter was passed through the hole. But still, Yana bolstered his self-confidence as he opened the flap and stuck his hand through. “Take it,” he said a moment later, trying to keep his self-doubt inaudible.

And then he felt it. There was a hand in his own, shockingly cold to touch and slightly smaller than his own, with nails that were in desperate need of a trim, and palms that were rough with calluses and clammy from wiping away tears.

Yana was positive that he’d never enjoyed holding anyone’s hand more.

“I’m so very sorry,” he began again, hoping his voice was carrying through the gap as he squeezed her hand. “I don’t know the full extent of what you’ve gone through, and from what you’ve mentioned, I’m not sure I’d ever truly understand it, even if you sat here telling me stories for the remainder of our days. But I’m sorry for your sorrows, and I’m sorry that you’ve wound up imprisoned here. You deserve better, and I wish I had something more substantial to offer than a hand.”

Faintly, he could hear sniffing from inside the cell. “You’re a good man, Ian,” came her quiet reply, minutes later.

“I do try,” he replied, and he heard her laugh.

“I haven’t held someone’s hand in over a decade,” she said, clenching his hand harder. “And to think, yours might be the last hand I ever hold!  It…well, it could definitely be worse.”

“That it could.”

They sat like that for the remainder of the day, hand in hand, without another word said.

***

There were five minutes left on his shift. Yana had risen from the hallway floor stiffly, having fallen asleep there for the past few hours. On screen, the Doctor appeared to be in a similarly sleep-addled state, but at least she looked far more settled than she had been before they’d sat together.

He’d almost turned to leave the booth when he saw that she was waving her hands at the camera trying to attract the attention, so he wandered back towards the microphone. “Is everything alright?”

“More than alright,” she replied, but he was troubled to see that some sadness had returned to her face—albeit a different breed than her misery before. “I just wanted to thank you again, Ian. For everything.”

“You don’t have to thank me Doctor, you know as well as I do that I enjoy your company—”

“And I also wanted to ask you to leave.”

That stopped Yana in his tracks. “I beg your pardon?”

She’d approached the camera again, staring down the lens with a grave seriousness in her features. “Leave. Break your contract with the Judoon and just go, you’re too good for this place.”

His mouth was gaping, caught so off guard by the comment that he wasn’t sure how to respond. “But I—I mean, that’s very kind of you to say, but I need the money.

“I’ll sort it once I’m out of here, whenever that is. Time-traveler, remember?” she tapped her temple knowingly, but her smile was still strained. “Doesn’t matter when I get out—and I will get out. I’ll have the money in your account by the weekend.”

Yana knew he should be grateful. If there was any chance she wasn’t insane—and heavens help him, his pathetic heart really did believe her—then it would be an enormous boon. She could save him a whole year’s worth of languishing in this prison. But at this very moment, he couldn’t find it in himself to feel grateful at all. “You would ask me to disappear just like that?! No more talks, no goodbye, nothing?”

“Please don’t think that I want you to go—far from it. But that’s half the point!” She closed her eyes. “I like you Ian. And I like the idea of you, out there, in the universe! You don’t need to be here, you should be out there building spaceships and saving those stars! You might be wanted in here, but you’re needed out there, in the refugee camps and the war zones. People like you always are.”

“I will go there—of course I will, when the time is right, but…but not…” But not yet! Not now! Not when he has just met the most fascinating person in the universe! Not when, for the first time in Yana’s life, he’s met someone who truly inspires him, someone who makes him feel understood! Although Yana voiced none of those protests, the Doctor seemed to read between the lines. Her smile grew both larger and sadder, and there was a self-sacrificing air of melancholy growing over her like a second skin.

It was infuriating. It made him want to wring her neck.

“Things might feel soon different around here anyways. Who knows?” she said, purposefully aloof. Then her eyes locked with the camera again. “After all, I think I remembered how that story about my friend in prison ends. She makes a run for it—of course she does, she has to try. She did it on a Friday too, much like tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? So soon?! Regardless of whether he stayed or departed, the Doctor would be gone from him before the next afternoon!

Yana was grateful the Doctor couldn’t see the horror etched into his face, or the outrage, or the bitter sadness clouding his eyes. It took him a whole minute before he was able to respond with anything resembling dignity. “Does she…make it?” he asked quietly. “This friend of yours, does she survive? Does she make it back to the stars?”

The Doctor smiled widely. “Oh, easily,” she replied earnestly. “She makes it out easy as anything, not a scratch on her. And she finds her time-ship quickly, and she reunites with her friends that same day. Happy endings all around.”

It was a lovely story. Yana just wished that he hadn’t seen the flicker of doubt flash across her face as she’d said it, or heard her voice falter. She really was a terrible actor. But he was under no illusion that anything he could say would sway her mind, now that it was made up. “Where would I even go?” he murmured. The idea that he could be gone by tomorrow felt too large to comprehend. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet; usually I have a plan, but I thought I’d have more time. I don’t even know which planets are left in this sector, much less which are forecasted to survive the year.”

She was silent for a moment, and when she spoke her words were thick with unease. “You should go to Malcassairo,” she said quietly, so much so that Yana found himself straining to hear. “It’ll survive longer than all the others. You’ll be able to live out your days there.”

Malcassairo? Yana had heard of it, but only in vagaries. Supply ships had supposedly started diverting there when their destination planets proved too volatile, or long-since dead. But it was a small planet, mostly scrub brush and mining hills, and a far-cry from his usual urban centers of focus. “Are you sure?”

“Very.” Her attention had turned from him again, back towards the mobius of portraiture she’d drawn earlier. “I was there once. I had a friend there. I know it’ll last until the very end.”

The end. That phrase, coming from her, still put chills down Yana’s spine. “I trust you,” he said honestly. “I’ll try my best. Is your friend still on Malcassairo? If I make it there, I can let them know you’re safe—”

“No,” she said firmly, and a sliver of her earlier anger crept back into her tone. “Don’t. I don’t want him anywhere near you.”  

Yana watched the strong lines of her back as she stood tensed, her hands clasped behind her. He wondered if she was truly as lost in her artwork as she seemed, or if she simply didn’t want to face him. He rubbed a hand over his chin, lost in thoughts of his own. “This friend of yours, the one in prison. What time did she make her escape?”

“The power short hit at five in the morning. Early, long before anyone else was awake.” Her back was still turned to him, but her voice thickened with every word. “Even before prison guards who loathe being late.”

This was it then, she’d be gone before his shift tomorrow. He’d never see the Doctor again. There was a gnawing in his gut, and he could almost hear the gears in his brain whirring, trying to find an acceptable solution for such an unacceptable set of variables. Absently, his eyes focused on his own reflection in the glass, only to startle at the swath of dark spread over his chin and around his mouth like a beard. Charcoal. He must have rubbed his chin with the hand that had spent hours holding the Doctor’s, chalk stains and all.

He rubbed his face vigorously before giving up and swiping it with a sleeve; decorum be damned, it was only himself here after all.

And it would only be himself here forever, after tomorrow…

Yana cleared his throat. “From the sound of it, I suppose this is goodbye then, Doctor.”

Her shoulders hitched once before slumping, and she turned around. Her expression had been forced into a mask neutrality so false that it might have made him laugh under different circumstances. “Goodbye Ian,” she said softly, her eyes infinitely sad. “And good luck.”

“And to you.”

He left it at that, as she tuned back to face the swarming darkness of charcoal on the wall. From a distance, it appeared as though she was dwarfed by it; a small figure of maroon and gold, enveloped by a charcoal sea of friends and monsters. Then again, if he squinted, she almost looked to be part of the art itself; its focal piece, perhaps—entirely at home amongst the chaos.

"Goodbye Doctor," Yana murmured, for what would surely be the last time.

***

Day 7

***

It was almost five in the morning and Yana was precisely on time. “Don’t even think about it, Doctor.”

The Doctor jumped a full foot into the air, wheeling around towards the camera like she’d seen a ghost. Yana had snuck into the booth to find that she was already awake as he’d expected, pacing in front of the door to the yard as though she was stretching for a relay. Her face looked gaunt, like she hadn’t slept a minute since his departure the night before.

For that matter, neither had he.

“Ian!” she shouted, darting back towards the camera as though she meant to grab it, her eyes stretched wide with panic. “What are you doing here?”

“You were really going to try running through a full prison yard full of your enemies, and navigating through the labyrinthine hallways within this place, all in under three minutes? Utterly ridiculous, it’s a wonder you’re not dead yet.”

“I don’t have a choice, I have to try! But you—you can’t be here, you can’t be anywhere near here when the power goes down! The other prisoners will be after anyone who even looks like a guard!”

“I’d imagine that’s true,” Yana said faintly, shuddering at the thought. “That’s why we won’t be going through the yard.”

The Doctor blinked at him though the camera, slowly, thick with disbelief as comprehension slowly dawned. “You’re…going to help me?”

He nodded, before remembering she couldn’t see him. “There are three doors between us and the transporter pad, with two guards posted nearby,” he explained, patting himself down as he spoke to ensure he’d packed all of his essentials. “From the booth to the pads, it should take us just over two minutes to get there, even less if we run. I’ve timed it.”

The precarious resolve he’d seen haunting her face as he arrived was melting away, replaced by something that looked frightfully like hope. “You timed it?” she asked slowly.

“Yes,” he said simply, glancing at the clock on the screen. Two minutes to go. "Two days ago, in fact. Long enough to have thought this through, as best as one can while facing such imposing odds. There’s going to be a bloodbath over those transporters, with everyone trying to access them all at once before the power reverts, but by my estimation we’ll get there well before the others.”

She was still eyeing the camera with incredulity, as though at any moment he might reveal it all as one terrible joke. “But what about you?” she implored, tripping over the words. “That’s all fine and well for me, but when the power comes back on the Judoon will see that our biosignatures passed through the doors together! They’ll come after you—you’ll be charged as a criminal too!”

“Well then, I guess I’d...bettergowithyou,” Yana said sheepishly, his words jumbling together as he flushed for what he hoped would be the last time under the harsh booth lights. The Doctor was slow blinking at him again, stunned into speechlessness while Yana’s face fell redder, suddenly petrified that he’d overstepped. “That is to say…only if that’s alright with you? I’d hate to seem forward. I know we didn’t discuss it, but I just thought—”

“But your work?” she whispered. “Your rescue efforts, your whole timestream—”

“I’ve had a change of heart—and occupation, as it were,” he interrupted her quickly, before her words could worsen his already substantial nerves. “I’ve had enough of saving dying stars. It might be nice to simply see them for once.”

 “You…” she still appeared to be reeling, too surprised to speak. “You…”

Yana shut his eyes and braced himself for her rejection, his heart pounding away in his chest like a drumbeat.

“…You absolute legend!”

His eyes cracked open, only to see the Doctor looking happier than he’d ever seen her. Elated, in fact, nearly giddy with it, as though he’d swept away a decade of misery in one fell swoop. “You incredible man—of course I want you to come with me, I just didn’t know that was an option!”

“You’re serious?” he asked, almost surprised to hear her say it, despite it having been his plan to begin with.

“Deadly serious! In the real world, I’d have asked you to travel with me days ago!”

Yana was smiling now too, all previous embarrassment having faded away. He felt more alive than he had in years—decades, maybe. He was going with her! He was going to travel with the Doctor! Elation brought him a newfound confidence in their plan; one that made a hoard of angry prisoners and multiple guards feel trifling—as though any of them could stand in their way! As though any of them would dare!

“Well then,” he said brightly, cheeks aching from a wide smile he couldn’t quite put away. “I guess that settles that then. Get ready Doctor, we’ve only got thirty seconds left! I’m going to press the emergency button that opens your door the minute the clock strikes five, and then there’s a short hallway that leads to my booth. I’ll open that one straight after, then lead us out from there.”

“Whatever you say,” she replied, her eyes still sparkling. “I can’t believe it, I’m going to see the TARDIS again, and the fam! I love you for this Ian, I really do. When I see you I’m going to hug you so hard—and I don’t even really like hugs this time around! I might even kiss you! I haven’t done much of that yet in this body, so who’s to say if I—”

“Five seconds left, Doctor,” Yana interrupted her stream of enthusiasm, both out of necessity, and because he was adamant that he wouldn’t be flushing like a teenager upon their first meeting, and her words weren’t helping one bit. “It’s almost time.”

She nodded, giving the camera a final look before turning to face the hallway door.

Yana held his breath, lifted the plexiglass covering the big red button, and waited.

And then it was five.

The lights in the booth flickered and died, just as Yana slammed his hand down, and…there she was. Through the dim, he could barely make out the Doctor’s shape as she came hurdling down the six steps of their dividing hall, just in time for Yana to throw open the booth door.

“Docto—mmph!”

Immediately, there were arms around his chest, squeezing so tightly that he swore he heard a rib pop. The top of the blonde head under his nose was irreparably knotted, and she smelled like a decade’s worth of dust and damp. And she was perfect.

“Told you I was gonna hug you,” she said, muffled into the vicinity of his neck.

“Come now, we have to go,” Yana urged. But instead of pulling away, now his own arms were wrapping around her, equally as tight.

Bzzzzt!

Dull red lights illuminated the booth with a mechanical whirr as the background generators powered on. This time, Yana really did drop his arms, and he immediately turned towards the exit door. “Now we really need to run—and I mean that literally. We’ll need to sacrifice subtlety for speed.” He didn’t even feel the finger prick of the biosensor, flooded with endorphins and adrenaline as he was.

It swung open without a hitch. They were really going to make it!

Yana turned back with a grin. “One down, only two to g—Doctor? Are you alright??”

The Doctor hadn’t moved a muscle from where they’d embraced, not even to relax her arms, which still hung limply in the air. Even her breathing appeared to have stilled. But she was looking at him with an expression of such profound horror that it shook Yana to his core.

“Please say something!”

“Ian,” she whispered, stretching the vowels around her mouth as though she were sounding it out for the first time. “I-an…Yan. Yana. You even told me it wasn’t your real name. How did I not recognize—”

“What?” Yana replied incredulously, with mounting panic. “Doctor, what does any of that matter now? My name is Yana, but you can call me whatever you like so long as we go now!”

“I’m so stupid,” she murmured to herself, her voice breathless and breaking all at once as she ignored him. “I must be the stupidest person in the whole wide universe—!"

“Doctor please!” Yana stepped towards her, startling as she jumped back as though he were a rabid animal. He glanced at the clock: 05:01. They’d already lost a minute! Now they’d definitely need to run, if they wanted any shot at the teleporter at all. “Listen to me, please,” he tried again, his voice low and frantic. “I don’t know what’s happening, or what has you so scared, but in less than two minutes there will be a Judoon squadron headed down these halls who will find you free from your cell and me having abetted you. So, we need run now.”

She was still looking at him as though she’d seen a ghost, too numb to do more than blink at him with paralytic horror.

Yana glanced back at the clock, his own horror growing as he watched their window of opportunity closing. “Please,” he whispered hoarsely, every atom of his being willing her to listen. “Don’t do this. We can’t both be imprisoned here—I can’t lose you!”

It was as though a spell had been broken. Relief shot through him as the Doctor finally stepped towards him, though her speed was far too slow. And her eyes remained far too cold. He grabbed her hand once she was within distance, and she allowed herself to be pulled the final meter closer to the door. “I’m so sorry Yana…” she said quietly.  

Instead of answering, Yana turned on his heel, still holding her tightly, and fully prepared to pull her by the arm all the way to the transport pad if he had to. Explanations could wait until they were safe.

“…But you already did.”

Before he could fully register her words, there was a blinding impact to his temple from behind.

He fell. And the world went dark.

***

Epilogue

***

Greetings.

Job: Guard. Species: Human. Name: Yana [family name redacted].

Contract: 7 days [terminated]

The ministry of Judoonia has issued you this formal apology on behalf of your injuries. We regret that harm was permitted to come to you within our jurisdiction, and we can assure you that the prisoner has now been tried with two further charges.

1] Attempting to abscond from fair legal process.

2] Assault of a uniformed officer on duty.

The case has been reviewed, and the following actions(s) have been taken:

1] The prisoner’s security requirements have been increased. Applications for holocell communication have been submitted.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, multiple offenders have absconded from the prison compound following riots, resulting from a routine electrical failure. Due to this, the penal committee has elected to move the station before its regularly scheduled jump. This order is effective immediately. We therefore regret to inform you that all local contracts have been terminated posthaste.

We thank you for your continuing dedication to the enforcement of law.

Signed:

Yana squinted at the letter under the afternoon sun for what must have been the twentieth time that day. But no, even after repeated inspection, he was still unable to discern the name on the signature beneath. It appeared more like a cross between a hoofprint and an inkblot. He sighed, folding the letter on its previously-worn creases before carefully placing it in his pocket alongside his watch, and returning to peer gloomily out at the skyline of launching ships.

He was glad for the letter, in a way. Without it, he wouldn’t have a scrap of evidence to substantiate what had surely been the oddest, most confusing (most eye-opening, most worthwhile) week of his life. His only resentment was not being able to remember how it ended, although he was certain it wasn’t as simple as himself having been attacked by his charge during an escape attempt, as the letter claimed.

But then, why didn’t he remember? And why had she attacked him at all?

Yana sighed again, his thighs stinging as the cold from the metal supply crate he’d perched on seeped right through his trousers. He closed his eyes. The real question was, what did he remember?

The noises of the shipyard melted away as he cast his mind back, wincing at the holes in his memories from the day before. She had hit him, that much rang true. And if memory served, she’d been saying something as she’d done it, but the words had long since left his mind. However, it didn’t feel as though he were suffering an amnesia driven by a concussion; rather, it felt as though his mind had been cherry-picked of specific memories dotting the past week, culminating in a massive blackout on the morning of their supposed escape. And it was supposed to be their escape. Yana did remember that much.

He exhaled slowly, willing himself to remember anything. Anything about that incredible woman with the absurd name, the one who called herself the…

Yana frowned, opening his eyes again with a profound sense of loss. No, that was gone too. He could remember whole hours of their conversations, her fantastical stories of aliens and adventures, the comfortable ease of her posture as he’d watched her work, creating sketch after sketch. She’d been blonde, small-built yet powerful, and she’d had a smile that he had taken pride in eliciting. She would ramble unstoppably when she was excited, and fall deathly silent when she was sad. And, when they’d embraced—and Yana was certain they had embraced, his brain wouldn’t be so cruel as to have fabricated that…she had smelled like home. Foundling as he was, and nomad as he would continue to be, Yana had never really known where home was. But having met her, he was sure that she’d been there. Or perhaps home simply was her...

He snorted, ripping himself from his maudlin as he stood, dusting off his jacket. That was quite enough wallowing for one day. Besides, it was an absurd amount of poetic sentiment to devote to a prisoner who he’d only known for a week, much less one who’d knocked him over the head at the first opportunity.

Much less one whose name he couldn’t even remember!

Yana gave himself a brief shake, self-chastising that he had far more important business to attend to than poetry. The Judoon had promised him a severance package in light of his early contract termination, but it wouldn’t be enough for off-world transport. If he had any hope of ever leaving Judoonia, he would require a new job. However, he supposed he’d do the diligence of checking his credit balance first, so that he’d know what time frame he was working with.

He wandered over to a credit counter within the shipyard, keyed in his personal access codes, and pre-emptively braced himself for the dangerously low balance he expected to see. But a moment later Yana’s face fell slack, and he stared at the machine aghast.

That…can’t be right!

Heart pounding, he logged out and reset the display, only to log back in and see…

The same. An absurdly high balance, as though a full year’s wages (or possibly more) had been deposited into his account.

“Excuse me,” he called out sheepishly to an attendant at the adjacent counter; one whose species he couldn’t quite place, but at his voice they had turned one of their three ears in his direction, so he supposed they were listening.

“Yes?”

“I believe there has been an error with my account. I’ve recently been let go by the penal council of Judoonia, you see, and they promised a severance package. But the deposit was significantly larger than I expected.” The longer Yana considered it, the more nervous he became. The last thing he need to do was to become embroiled in financial red tape with the Judoon—or, worse, to be accused of thievery.

“Number?”

“Seven-two-four-two-two-double zero-slash two.” 

Underneath more fingertips than Yana could count, the attendant’s keypad clicked away. “No mistake,” they said finally, without a glance his direction. “Judoonia deposit: two hundred credits. Unlisted account deposit: two hundred and fifty thousand credits.

Unlisted…?! Just like that, another memory returned to him. A voice, his prisoner’s voice, to be sure, promising him money if only he’d leave Judoonia behind. Doesn’t matter when I get out—and I will get out. Time-traveler, remember?

She had done it. Somewhere, at some point, the prisoner really had escaped. She was free!

“Would you like purchase a ticket?”

Yana knew he was grinning like a fool, inexplicably elated. “I suppose I must. It would be rude not to keep my end of the bargain,” he murmured to himself, before clearing his throat and returning his attention to the attendant. “Yes. One ticket to Malcassairo, if there’s any ship departing today?”

The attendant nodded, returning to clack at the keyboard.

Again, Yana shut his eyes, and he could almost swear that he heard a great clicking across the sky, as though it were the sound of some universal gear of fate falling into place, or some great timepiece ticking way, informing him that he was right on schedule.

Or was it a clicking at all? Come to think of it, it sounded more like a drumbeat.

“And give me a window seat, if you have it,” he added with an indulgent smile, his eyes still shut and his mind whole eons away. “Something with a view. I want to see the stars.”