Until The End Of Time Itself [Thasmin]

episode four: death comes...for some VII

It was like a statue of stone, trying to shiver. Yaz broke the wind that split and had woven around her, between her posing arms, and every crisp finger tip, and every brittle strand of hair, blown behind her. There was nothing to prevent what she saw through the glass. Clouded, but through it, the doctor's face cleared, and the red that dripped from clustered blonde locks cut into the snowy white of the glass. Her head rose and fell with every breath, and a fire radiated from her that melted away the frost.

While it was Yaz who felt stone, it was the doctor on a podium, being watched from all angles, taunted and worshipped the same, hated and respected the same. Feared. And while they watched, while Yaz watched, unable to snuff out the candle light in her mind or close her eyes, the presence of death melted from her, she stepped on it, sunk into it, while it slipped off away through the crack in the door.

The second she had heard the screams, she stopped. She had no idea what was stopping her from stepping into that place, even though she knew something terrible had happened, was happening, was going to happen. Would be happening throughout time and space for centuries in either way, the past and the future, and it was all stemming from this place. But those screams sounded like the doctor. Only not quite. Upon hearing it, she couldn't imagine her face, or her usual mannerisms, she couldn't even imagine her anger from only hours ago. This was the doctor, twisted, misshapen, folded and pushed down to fill a new role, and the same screams were dense, low growls that vibrated through nails for teeth, gritted, sanded, washed away and new, burning in the flames that formed her.

The man, the very creature had dragged her to this place, reeking with sweat, mouth open, breathing out such a clogged warmth that she couldn't breathe. She was compelled to follow, forced to lead, until the place of the doctor's downfall was reached. When reached, though, he didn't care to look back, and inside, the windows thickened with his shallow breaths, anticipation clinging to the windows, and her pain shook the house like a slammed door, like a full stop, an earthquake willing the world to an end.
The doctor was in there. The creature had left the door open a sliver. Yaz forced her legs to move her closer to the window, the red glow emanating from it warmed her, but she preferred the cold, this time. A world burning or a world freezing to death. Which one would you like? Death by the doctor, or the death of a world without her? Doomed, doomed, doomed.

"Go on, doctor. Do it." It was the creature, a voice echoed and filling the universe with copies, replicates of temptation. "Humanity is a sickness. Surely, surely you see it now." The voice disappeared for a moment, and was replaced with desperation, peeling from the lips like wallpaper in a house left to rot for centuries, pulled at, picked at, painted and tainted and changed. The doctor, or what was left of her.
"Do it, or I'll do it again. Finish the job. Do it-"

The sound faded out, and red trickled in again. Images of the doctor's empty eyes, soaking in all that had happened. Blood dripped down her face, and coated the white of her eyes, trailed down her cheeks to the point of her chin, and more falling, dripping, like a broken tap that just wouldn't stop.
Whose was all that blood?

"Finish the job, damnit!"

An empty crack snapped through the shed, splinters stabbing at Yaz's skin, soft bursting of her eardrums. Yaz flinched, and soon after, the sound gained strength, gaining on her, reaching her for a second, third time, making her body jump in on itself again and again, each time unexpected. The sound scraped at her skin, reached her lips, and she swallowed it. It stuck in her throat. It stung and throbbed. It had taken Yaz this long to realise her eyes were closed, and her head leaned back with the weight of her thoughts, almost toppling her. She didn't want to see. She couldn't.

"You know you want to."

Another voice finally emerged, a wet mumble, a throatful of blood, the word spitting out after a few tries. "N-no."