the day that time stood still (thasmin)

Chapter 9

good lust- Keaton Henson 

(Yaz pov)

We get to the TARDIS and walk down to the library, which is my second favourite room here aside from the control room. Its sheer size is enough to take your breathe away, she says its the third largest library in this universe. It has everything you could possibly want to read. I wonder why she has taken me here but I catch on as she guides me towards the non-fiction section. She's said it before, there are books about her, stories written down for all to read. She'll she me the stories that are too painful to say aloud. I guess so anyway.

"i would love to start from the beginning but that would take too long, so I'll paraphrase most of it for you. I went travelling, with my granddaughter, and we found earth and found it so interesting so she said to me "grandfather", I was probably close to 1960s 1970s and I was a man, she said "grandfather, I would like to go to a human school, learn what they learn. I certainly look the age." And well, you know grandparents have a certain lack of control when it comes to their grandchildren, with food and trips away. We spent a long time doing this, accidentally picking up humans along the way. We grew fond of earth, and we vowed to protect it. But I had to go home, a planet called Gallifrey, and well this is where it all starts to go a bit pear shaped. Horrific really. There was a war, the great time war." She pauses, gets a book from the shelf next to her. "here, the pictures move a bit, captured with some time lord tech. I haven't looked at it for some time. It was too much for me to bear before."

Opening it I am pulled straight into the war with images showing children screaming, adults cradling their young as bombs go off behind them, the small remnants of buildings falling behind them as they run away.

"i had one choice here, I had the option to save everyone, the whole universe. You see there was all sorts of aliens there. Daleks were the main ones. But for everyone to be safe, well, Galifrey had to fall."

I turn through more pages until I reach on titled "doctor". I see an unfamiliar face, one full of anger and fear. A man's face that was old, one that had seen time develop, one that had realised the thing they never wanted to know. A face that was about to kill his own planet. "you had to." I couldn't get the words out. It was all too much to comprehend. The woman in front of me was so frail, so torn. The woman in front of me was the man on the page I hold open.

"i'm not proud of it Yaz, it changed me. I had no home, no friends who could understand my pain. I had basically committed genocide on my own species, I'm the only one, Yaz, because I killed them all." She couldn't hold in her tears anymore and they all came flooding out, the whole thing too much to bear, too much to hold in. "we saved them. me, and all the other versions of me from throughout time. We saved them all but I'm still alone. All my other incarnations and their TARDIS's helped to pull them into a pocket universe but it doesn't change anything for me. They live but I can't see them, or talk to them. We can't move across universes because it will burn up stars. I'm still alone. And I've lost everyone I care about. Yaz. I'm going to lose you too one day. Theres no way to stop it."

Tears were streaming down both of our faces now, I knew I would have to say goodbye eventually, but its so real, so raw for her, she knows the pain of saying goodbye because she carries it everywhere she goes.

"and Rose. Of all the words you chose Rose?"

"She travelled with me. But I made a mistake. I fell in love, and I could never tell her. We had so many marvellous adventures but. But she got trapped, like my planet, in a different universe. One I cant get to because I had to seal them off from each other. I had to leave her on Bad Wolf Bay, alone. Well, not really alone, but. We loved each other Yaz, and I couldn't save her, I couldn't save any of them. Not Rose, not Donna or Martha. Not Bill."

We sit in silence, just looking at each other, neither of us moves. The silence is filled with emotion, raw emotion. Both of us crying, not sure of how to stop. I lean towards the shaking woman in front of me, taking her in my arms, offering my own warm embrace so she knows, that for now, she isn't alone, and if we are to leave each other, for whatever reason, she knows that it won't be soon, that for now we will have each other. We will have Ryan and Graham. We will even have my mum to run to if we need it. I hug her so she knows that I am here.