Until The End Of Time Itself [Thasmin]

episode two: the sickness III

Yaz could feel her heart, but it was the last thing on her mind. She had tried for so long to forget the Doctor, to accept that she was gone from this earth, from this universe, and yet she returned, unharmed. She had gotten her back, and she wasn't going to lose her again. She couldn't. And anyway, this was not how this was supposed to end. This was not how it worked, throughout all of their journeys, and all their troubles, the day ended well and at their home away from home, the safest place despite all of its troubles.

But since the last time...Yaz couldn't deal with it the same. It was different. It wasn't the Doctor saving them, which was always a certainty that removed fear, but that they, she, and she alone, was responsible for saving her. What a terrible job she had done the last time...she begged herself not to think about it, or about the troubles and the fears that faced her.

There was no light, but she knew where to go: simultaneously the one place that calmed her and scared her the most. She was going to the Doctor, she was sure, but by following that dreadful, empty sound that rattled the ribcage protecting her heart. She could feel it chatter and jump as it thumped through the air.

She was going to the Doctor. She was going to save her, this time. This time.

Tiptoeing down the aching staircase, Yaz took a breath and held it, slipping further into darkness. The room beyond her attacked her from all sides with this darkness. The sound was so much louder here, as if amplified. She looked around but to no avail. No sight, no light in sight at all, she thought. No hope? But no, with dread, with every sinking footstep, she noticed she had no need to move, because she was no longer following the sound.

It was following her.

Without moving, without breathing, not only the sound but the presence continued to grow. Thumping. Thumping, pounding through her skull. That and nothing else. It consumed all of the air, so thick she couldn't breathe.

But what about the Doctor? Where was she?

"What are you?" Yaz said, coughing now as she spoke. "What do you want?"

She listened, and heard nothing more than the steady growing of the sound. Relentless. It would never stop.

Her hands reached out for some sense of the room but her fingers grasped at cold, dead air. There was no movement nor life here. Not even from the presence that was growing ever near. Just the emptiness in the gaps between the now pounding against the castle walls, rooms quaking. Nothing but death in every corner.

"We can help you." Yaz said now, and it came from a place of earnest. Truth. She meant no harm, only to help, and be helped in return, though now she wasn't sure who or what needed that help the most. All she could feel, deep within her was a sadness that could not be replaced and so burrowed itself a place within her chest, to stay forever.

She was not usually so easily phased, but there was something tragic hidden in plain sight, like paintings on the walls, eyes that watched you with a mournful fading stare, but that she hadn't seen earlier on, and it brought tears to her eyes. The entire place, from the building to the sky to the surrounding trees all sang the same sorrowful tune, but none louder than in this room. She had the feeling it had been here for a very long time. Perhaps forever. It was a terrible place, a terrible feeling, and she couldn't breathe.

When the next bang came, she jumped and the floorboards shook underneath her like she was making the house shiver.

"Please." Yaz whispered, voice stolen away into inexplicable heartbreak.

Then came a new sound. Possibly it had always been there but she hadn't noticed it before. The sound of breathing, so faint it sounding like the very last breaths, so unrepresentative of life that it more resembled the blowing of the wind from place to place, a nothingness forced into action by nature, more resembled the creaking of the wood or the mechanics of a working set of lungs and simply nothing else. It resembled everything but that which defined life.