Doctor Who: Series B [UPDATES SUNDAYS]

Episode 1: Far From Here

In the distant Altraki galaxy, there's a legend - or a rumour, depending on the translation of their most common dialect - about a love that tore a world apart. In the story, passed down from generation to generation, a lone woman walked away from the ruins of her world, her heart ripped asunder, accompanied by a Knight who was sympathetic to her plight. 

In some tellings, however, it is the Knight who is responsible for the original heartbreak having slain the woman's lover; in others, he is the  fool who tried to tire out the fates long enough to save a life. 

Regardless of the details, the story always ends the same: the broken woman, cracks in her soul hardening day-by-day as she tried to piece herself together again, arrived on the world of Solace to find peace. Instead, she found the darkest secret in the Altraki galaxy's midsts.

"One day," the elders tell their young new audience, "the woman and her Knight will return for vengeance. Until then, each world should prepare, ready to drown in the tears of a fallen love."

-Extract from 'Stories of Our Past: Archaeology Across the Lightyears' by Prof. River Song

***

For a Time Lord, the burden of time was a peculiar one. All at once, they felt the painful space between each second, and stepped across centuries. For the Doctor, the last eighteen months had painfully leant towards the former.

Sometimes, days would go by without Jade saying a single word; on others, she would speak only in short sentences and wistful glances. It had been five hundred and fifty-two days since Callum had died, and Jade seemed to count each and every minute, as if doing so would put distance between herself and the moment her heart broke. 

The Doctor was as at fault as Jade, busying himself to put physical distance between them and that moment, where he new that time wouldn't help. They had trekked across deserts made of the fallen leaves of the Great Yanwa Tree, saved a dozen worlds from the plague of Hash'ash Minok, watched the suns set across hundreds of worlds, and gone days without speaking. 

Jade hadn't requested a destination beyond the last words they had spoken on Earth. "Take me far away.... Anywhere but here," she had pleaded, and the Doctor had obliged. He decided where they should go, gauging Jade's reacting in the small ways her face changed at the sight of something incredible, or the determined way her mouth seized at the edges when she decided to help someone on their travels. 

Although she didn't question where they went, there was one place he knew was off limits: Earth. Since Callum's death, it had become a memorial not to a life that she had lost, but a potential life that was stolen from her; the Doctor knew better than to try and tempt her back.

Sometimes, at relative night - a tradition that originally had helped the Doctor and his companions set a schedule and stay rested, now a means  to be alone - the Doctor could hear Jade sobbing. The TARDIS seemed hellbent on letting him know Jade was upset, the sobs echoing around the various labyrinthine corridors. It wouldn't let the Doctor sleep, and neither would he. It was, after all, his fault that Jade  was so distraught - his actions had doomed Callum, and his cowardice had seen them fall in love. He'd tried to dismiss it as being kind, but whenever he caught a glimpse of his reflection and turned away from it, he got all the confirmation he needed: he was a coward, through and through.

***

On the five hundred and fifty-fourth day, the duo stood silently in the TARDIS control room, waiting for the time machine's shrieking huff to silence as it materialised. It was one of the heavier days, where the weight of what had happened sat between the Doctor and Jade, pulling them both down.