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The Tower was a fortress built to keep things out, but lately, Kate felt it was doing a much better job of keeping things in. The walls seemed to lean inward, heavy with a thousand state secrets.
The headquarters were too quiet. That was the first problem.
In the aftermath of the war, the silence didn’t feel like peace. When had it ever? It felt more like an ever-widening chasm. Had she ever felt peace? Every time she closed her eyes, she still heard the crack of the glass and his laboured breathing, a building cacophony that no amount of deep-breathing exercises could stifle. Kate sat at her desk, the surface polished to a mirror finish that reflected a face she barely recognized. The woman in the reflection had eyes that were too sunken, a mouth pulled too tight, and hair that seemed to be turning grey in real-time.
She had been on double the dosage for several days—to keep the edges of the world from fraying, to keep herself on track …at least that’s what she told herself—and now the fluorescent lights seemed to hum in a frequency that vibrated against her teeth. It was a rhythmic, drilling sound. It reminded her of a heartbeat. Or a ticking clock. Or the sound of a shovel hitting dirt.
She stared at the woman on her desk. Her mouth was moving. Saying words, perhaps. What words? She squinted, hoping to figure out the mumbling. The reflection’s lips were pale, almost blue.
A change of pace. It was a sensible thought. A logical thought. She had been thinking it for years, hadn't she? Tucked away behind the casualty reports and the planetary defense protocols. But something always intervened. A Cybermen invasion, a temporal rift, the end of the world. There was always a reason to stay in the trenches. There was always a world to save, and the world was a greedy thing; it didn’t care for vacations or mental health days. Or for listening to the lilting voice of one's beloved as he read a poem for her— It demanded every ounce of her, and she had given it willingly, like a martyr offering up her own skin.
Then Christofer had arrived.
He had been the one to nurture the seed again, whispering about life outside the steel and the secrets. He was the one who made the idea of a pace—a human pace, a walking pace—seem like something other than an unattainable dream. He’d talk about the mundane things with a reverence that confused her. Sunday papers. Coffee that didn’t come from a vending machine. A day where the worry was about whether there were enough ingredients for Shish Tawook and not whether the walls had been reinforced against orbital strikes. But could she actually do it? Even now, with the world scarred and the water still tasting of salt and betrayal, the question felt like a trap. It felt like a betrayal of her father, of her duty, of the very ground she stood on.
The argument had been silent at first, a slow-motion collision of priorities. He was too adamant that she take care of herself, and she was too adamant to keep working. He’d bring her tea she forgot to drink; he’d schedule meetings she’d find excuses to skip just so they could have five minutes of silence, and she’d fill that silence with the sound of her keyboard.
“UNIT comes first,” she had told him. She could see his face now, blurred by the medication and the memory. It was a kaleidoscope of a face, shifting between the man who loved her and the man who died for her. “We do not matter.”
How often had she repeated those words? They were a mantra. A shield. But now they were a haunting. Those were the last words he may have properly heard her speak. Not a confession. Not a thank you. Not a plea for him to stay. Just a cold, dismissive, bureaucratic directive. A command from a general to a soldier, rather than a woman to her heart.
I love you. I need you. She should have said those more often. She only uttered them to him as his life was leaking out, as the light in his eyes was being reclaimed by the life she had sworn herself to dark. Did I ever really love him? Or had the years of putting this not-so-covert-anymore organization first finally chipped away at my capability to love? Was I just a machine that mistook the warmth of his presence for a functional energy source?
He died for me. And for what? For a woman who may as well be made of stone and red tape. You I should have died instead. The logic of it was sound—at least, in this drug-induced haze, it felt sound. He was the one with the soul. I’m She’s just the one with the keys to the armory.
‘A change of pace.’ I scoff at the idea now. The desk feels cold under my palms, like ice, like his body the deep ocean floor where the light never reaches. If Chris were alive, I would have. Would you have? I would have. I would have listened. You should have. I would have given him the reins. You never did. I would have let him help me stop being Commander for a single, solitary moment. It’s too late. I would have. I would have! I would have left UNIT if he’d asked me to. But he would never. You know that. Katherine. I know that. Now that I know the price—the ultimate, crushing price—you would have.
I would have burned it all down just to see him breathe by my side. You would have handed the keys to the Master herself if it meant Chris could sit in that chair and tell me a story about everything his father his sisters the house he grew up in nothing.
Oh, I would have.
“I’d leave, darling. Just say the word.” The empty office swallows my whisper. It tastes like dust and ozone. The shadows in the corner seem to stretch, lengthening like fingers reaching for my throat. “Just come back. Please.”
But of course, my pleas don’t matter. When have they ever? We live in a world filled with a race that would tear each other apart just to gain a hold, no matter how flimsy. The Homo Aqua, the humans, the monsters—they all tear. They rip and they rend and they leave nothing but scraps behind. We are a species of teeth.
But Chris... he never tore me apart.
The concretization of that thought makes me freeze. The air in the room feels thick, like I’m underwater again, the pressure building in my ears until I want to scream. I'm the one who tore him apart. He never begged for space in my life. He was just there, patient and warm, a steady anchor in a storm I insisted on sailing into every single day. And I treated him like a secondary objective. An asset to be managed. That’s all I’ve done, isn’t it? Taken and taken and taken from him. I took his time, I took his peace, and eventually, I took his breath. Just like I always do. And him being the— him being who he was—he let me. He smiled and he let me hollow him out. He offered himself up to my fire and I let him burn.
But he begged.
The voice is slick, like oil on water. The woman on the desk—the reflection—keeps on moving her mouth, her eyes wide and mocking. I grip the edge of the desk so hard my knuckles turn white, then grey, then translucent.
“Oh yes.” My voice sounds thin and erratic, a frayed wire sparking in the dark. “He begged. He begged me to give him a tiny bit of space in my heart. But it was never for him. No. It was always for me. Always for my good in mind. Always…”
Always for you, Kate. And look at you now. A change of pace? You’re just running out of breath. You’re drowning on dry land, and he’s not here to pull you up this time.
I look at the pill bottle. It’s sitting right there, next to a framed photo I can’t bear to look at. The orange plastic is translucent, glowing under the hum of the lights. It’s empty. Or maybe it’s full. I can’t quite remember how many I took. One for the grief, one for the ghosts, one for the silence. I just know that the pace is changing, the world is tilting on its axis, and I’m not sure I can keep up anymore. I’m not sure I want to.
The silence in the room began to roar. Kate reached for the bottle again, her fingers trembling so violently she knocked it over. It clattered across her desk—clack, clack, clack—like the sound of a soldier’s boots retreating down a long, dark corridor. She didn’t chase it. She wanted to. Maybe she should have. She simply watched her reflection in the desk, waiting for the woman in the surface to finally stop talking.