i might brave the fire til the feeling hits

make or miss

Every step is a beckoning. It doesn't help them.

Lately, Yaz has found herself wondering about how dead inside the action heroes are on the films back home. Eyebrows furrowed, dead thin lines for mouths, every limb fluid only to run, to jump, to pull a trigger.

How do they not cry? How do they not bluster and fluster and fall? Why don't they grip onto each other when the going gets tough – really tough?

Ryan and Graham have each cried three times in the last hour. They're the bravest men Yaz knows.

(Films are a lie.)

Explosions and gunshots are a constant shock to the system for a trio not brought up in war. Their deafening nearer, louder. Yaz has squeezed the Doctor's hand more times she can count. Even after all they've witnessed together, after seeing all the bodies that have littered their journey through this planet, Yaz finds refuge in the Doctor. Every time. She has held on tightly that she is at risk of melding their bones together; but then, at least, there would be less flesh to locate, to target, to shoot.

Sight, not sound, betrays them. Every step is a beckoning, so they do their best to float. Silent breaths flee in bewildered spirals: everything pained to be anything but reluctant.

Yaz can see goosebumps on her forearm, the sleeve of her hoodie only pushed back to prevent any more bloodstains. She will not groan for fear of discovery. Winces are all impassion. She has too much passion.

At least the Doctor's hand is warm in hers. Hood up, grey-white and spoiled red against the rust red rock, she leads the way; they must follow the ripped coattails, so sure on this trembling planet.

'She's got to be around here somewhere,' she mutters, almost merely mouths. More to herself or to her friends, there is no indication.

Time is the first victim that war's first bullet claims. War devours history – arrogant, starved – and feasts on futures for dessert. This place lost time long ago; it is up to them to find it.

Madness.

A shot, then a snarl. Must be a foot soldier, prowling. 'Sniff out the fear and find the traitors,' they'd heard all around them. Yaz is terrified that fear will fail them, but it wafts off them in waves. Every step into the unknown is a beckoning. Every step is a step into ending.

The Doctor dives behind the nearest free-standing rock and slams herself into it; they obediently press themselves against its jaggedness and pray to gods they do or don't believe in.

They do not breathe.

There is no point in breathing.

'Breathing is death; all is death,' so the saying goes here. If they are to achieve the impossible – to defy all – then something as obvious as breathing would be a fool's mistake.

Unfortunately, breathing is generally essential for survival, and Yaz can feel her lungs bursting with the effort to contain the carbon dioxide building up.

Graham is going red as the rock that might save him.

A vein has started bulging in Ryan's neck.

The Doctor is fine.

The soldier marches on, the two-beat rhythm quieting. Until the only rhythms they hear are their own accelerated heartbeats.

Exhalation has never been sweeter. Or more silent. Yaz feels fuzzy and everything looks the same sort of red. The Doctor is fine. She helps Yaz to her feet and her gentle grip, slender fingers on the hook of Yaz's elbow, is central to everything.