Until The End Of Time Itself [Thasmin]

introduction.

There was no telling where she had been those years, or at least, that was how she was going to let this play out.

The doctor hadn't died on Gallifrey.
She hadn't detonated the bomb, but her planet had been eradicated of all life, every single inch of it was devoid of breath or light or movement but for the breathing, living, animate flames that took the shape of the citadel, golden and dying, slowly.

No one had stepped foot there since that fateful night, not her, not anyone, but especially not her. She couldn't stand it. Back where she had started. Less infact, because now she did not know who she was, or anything she stood for. Now she was a mystery not just to those around her, but to herself. Her own two hearts beating out of sync. Fighting one another. She could feel it in her chest. All the time. And yet she could feel nothing at all.
Everything in her slowly dying, withering away.

There was only one thing that could even attempt to remedy this, but the idea alone terrified her.

All these years.

There was a shaking, a tremble in her clenched fists, blood running through her fingers, red and hot and terrified.
This wasn't much like her, but so much had changed. But after everything that had happened to her through the years, all the waiting, the fighting, the breaking apart slowly and trying to piece herself back together again, nothing scared her more than knocking on the door of Yasmin Khan.

***

It was still the same street. The same block of buildings in the same town in the same country, but something had changed. Something felt out of place. Different. A different that was difficult for even the smartest of minds to figure out, because it seemed it was not a thing of the physical realm that had changed. No. It was more emotional than that.

The doctor's TARDIS was miles away from this old place she knew so well. She could feel it gazing at her from afar, even though she had walked so far she could no longer see the bright blue peaking through the trees in the distance. It was quiet, the whole walk, her footsteps falling into the floor rather than hitting, not even she made a sound. The area she once knew was empty of people, and colourless.
She remembered, there used to be worlds of brightness in these confines, both outdoor but closed off from the rest of the world, like a protective bubble in the center of the entire universe, and that day, it felt to her as though the bubble had popped, the colour drained into the real world, the air going with it.

The closer she got to those stairs, the stairs that led to the walkway that led to her door, the less she found she could breathe. Her mind rattled with ideas of what she would say to her when she knocked upon her fate, her last hope, when she looked into the eyes of this woman with the kind smile and persistent eyes that could break through any barrier - even the doctor's. Then her mind trailed off with the endless possibilities of how Yaz might have reacted when they locked eyes once more.

She couldn't bear it.

Anger. Betrayal. What if-

She had to stop doubting herself like this. She wasn't just her. She was many people, all wrapped into one. She was powerful. She was everyone, at once. But knowing all this just made her lose her grip with reality, with herself, and all her trust she once had in herself, and other people, it had just disappeared.

Yaz would understand, of course. She knew it.

No. The Doctor didn't know anything, any more.

It was dull. Even at the door of her house, it was dark and gloomy, and an empty feeling took place in her chest. There was something brewing. Something she didn't understand. Emotions, emotions she hadn't felt in a long while nor understood them, their origin. It was just a feeling that exploded the second she saw this door, this city, actually, and only grew the closer she got to the epicenter of the feeling.