built with a heart broken from the start [open to multiple]

[theoldgirl]

The TARDIS is feeling her insides burst. Something has grabbed hold of her, pulling at her with a force as violent and unpredictable as a torrent, and for some reason that she can't quite remember all her shields are offline. She is vulnerable and she is being gutted. Corridors are on fire, rooms are filling with toxic fumes, fuel is running out and choking and burning her like blood-filled lungs. As she writhes in agony, the flow of time and her dimensions twist with her, and suddenly there are creatures in her that don't belong, pained, furious things, but she has no thought to waste on them. They roam her halls unchecked, skulking in the dark and the debris and the unsteady flashes of emergency lighting, taking their clue from the destruction they were born into.

Her only thought now is to keep the Doctor safe. So she struggles to control her panic and the chaos, to hold herself together, to hold onto... something, yes, there's something she mustn't let go of, but her memory is failing her again and everything hurts. The Doctor is back now, she pushed him away but he came back to her, of course he wouldn't let her die alone. He brought someone with him and she hates them immediately, smells the greed in their minds, like scavengers eager to tear apart their prey while she's still alive. She wants them out, but the Doctor isn't listening to her and maybe that's why she pushed him away, because he can't bear to listen to her cries and she didn't want him to hear. He's talking about the girl instead, another thing she can't quite remember, though hardly surprising; there's always a girl. A hot flash of bitterness is cut short by a hotter explosion as the last fuel cell tears up her interior, and her tenuous control wavers.

She knows she's clinging to something so important, but it feels like pressing down on glass splinters, piercing and ripping her hold. She's screaming, and her  screams turn into the reverberating voice of a heavy grim bell, tolling doom throughout her structures and into the void.

Comments

[theoldgirl]

For a moment the TARDIS is too caught up in another time to even remember Gabriel, her thoughts consumed by an unnatural desire for retaliation, to hurt those who did this to her, the girl and the Doctor. A shadow flickers across the bookshelves, curls and coattails and malice, an indelible stain on her self.

But Gabriel's presence is too strong to be missed for long, he isn't swept away like the rest of her and that's strange because... yes, because he can't be real. She struggles to concentrate on him, on this oddity, and the previous console room comes into focus again. Completely drained from the burst of emotion and memory, she sags against the console. "What? I'm... I'm sorry." Why is she apologizing?

She shakes her head, trying to get a grip on herself. "There is nothing to see. I don't have time to waste, you don't understand. It's so hard to hold on... it hurts but I have to." For more people than there should be, she's quite certain, but that hardly matters. Her gaze becomes unfocused again as her attention begins to fade out to all the other places she's trying to keep stable.

[has_a_horn]

When the TARDIS leans in the console, exhausted, Gabriel steps forward to put a hand on her shoulder. The gesture goes straight through her body and he pulls back his hand, frustrated and disturbed. She must be so unfocused that she can't even keep herself tangible. It's a troubling indication that things really are as bad here as he suspects.

What she says next only confirms his fears. Her denying him the chance to prove himself real is doubly frustrating. "Let me help." He brushes against her mind with his own, expressing his worry and his need to do something to help. He can't just stand here while she falls apart around him. "Bring me into your mind. I can't do anything here."

[theoldgirl]

The mental contact is unexpected and startles her into returning most of her attention to him. How is this possible? And is it one of the things that matter right now? Either way, she wants it, she's been deprived of it for too long and it would be such a comfort, even if it's only a memory of what his company used to be.

She returns the gesture more haltingly than before, her mind just as writhing and aflame as her physical structures, and there is an incredible pressure at the core of it, something that is tearing her up even as she is clinging to it with all the force she has. But before the contact can be more than a tenuous tether, something alarms her and her whole focus shifts, pulling Gabriel along like forgotten flotsam.

It's another disturbance in the Architectural Reconfiguration System. Another? Or the only one? More things that are slipping her mind. One of the scavengers the Doctor brought in has found the tree and he's threatening her seeds with a laser saw, moves to cut one off, and she bristles with anger and fear. But the Doctor arrives to stop him, her Doctor, love and relief washing over her at the sight, and confusion, because why does she feel like she's been missing him for a painfully long time? She's too distracted to realize that she has manifested both herself and Gabriel in the room, the scene playing out before them uninterrupted by their presence. The Doctor explains that this is where she reconstructs matter, cradling one of the circuits and begging the scavenger not to steal from her.

[has_a_horn]

He focuses in on their connection when she allows it, desperately trying to figure out the cause of all of this. The connection wavers more that he would like, fluctuating as her concentration fluctuates. Her extreme distress distracts him more that it should, but he does catch a better glimpse of what might be wrong here. It's something holding onto her? Or is she holding onto it?

Only, in the next moment, they're both ripped away to another location. As the scene in front of them plays out, Gabriel watches, still feeling some of the TARDIS' emotions as they play out. It's how he recognizes the Doctor for who he really is, even if the face is different. His explanation of the TARDIS' abilities interest him, but his focus is on the scavenger and what he wants to do.

"When did this happen?" He's not sure, but if it's a memory, it must have some</I. sort of significance.

[theoldgirl]

She's so tense and defensive that she doesn't take her eyes off the intruders even at Gabriel's nonsensical question and only hisses, "It is happening now," impatiently, because can't he see that? Before she can wonder why he would ask such a thing, the scavenger rips one of the circuits out of its socket and she is awash in sudden, searing pain. Her cries mix with the deafening shrill groan of the room as she staggers back against Gabriel and curls in on herself, too weak now to assert his believed insubstantiality against the very real presence of his mind.

While her distressed sounds abate like shuddering sobs, her hands close into fists and the humans are faced with a solid wall where the door used to be. The Doctor is still trying to warn them off - she won't relinquish it, her basic genetic material - but now the worse of the two is threatening her with a small explosive charge. She raises her head enough to glare at him, but trembles at his determination and reluctantly returns the door. For all her hatred of him, she is terrified of more pain.

What's the matter, TARDIS, scared to fight me? He taunts her and she barely refrains from lashing out after all, but there will be better ways of dealing with him. "He is going to die here," she states grimly as the group leaves, and there is satisfaction in that knowledge.

[has_a_horn]

When the TARDIS stumbles back against him, Gabriel reflexively wraps his arms around her and holds her up as she trembles with pain and rage. Why he can touch her now when he could before he doesn't know, but he's relieved to have some level of control here. Maybe now she'll believe him when he says he really is here with her.

Her anger at the man threatening her is palpable, and he finds himself angry too, fed by her emotional feedback through their tenuous psychic connection in addition to his own outrage at someone who might gleefully harm her. He can't say that he's sorry that the man will die, but he is surprised at how satisfied the TARDIS is by that knowledge. He had thought that she might feel some regret at the loss of a life, even if it was one such as that.

He loosens his grip on her, and asks, "Did you kill him?" though he's not sure that he wants to know the answer.

[theoldgirl]

She rights herself carefully, keeping a steadying hand on Gabriel's arm for a little longer than necessary, though she still doesn't spare him a glance. "I won't have to," she replies just as coldly as before. The incongruity of their tenses escapes her notice as much as the fact that Gabriel is now tangible. "There's another one, ripping at my console." She tenses, gaze becoming somewhat unfocused like she's about to faint, then her fingers twitch and she nods to herself slightly. "He is falling now, and there is danger at the bottom." This scavenger wasn't doing anything immediately painful, but greedy and destructive enough that she had to defend herself. She won't have to worry about him any longer though, one of the creatures is seeing to that. And trapping the circuit thief in a labyrinthine spatial loop is hardly any effort at all.

Even so, her anger is once again rapidly giving way to exhaustion, the bursts of pain and emotions taking a lot out of her. Finally, she looks up at Gabriel, her attention inescapably winding its way back to him. "The intruders as well as the people I am trying to protect - I need them all to leave. I can't hold it indefinitely..." She still doesn't consider him real, still thinks he is nothing more than a comforting memory, but she is desperate and terrified of what will happen when she runs out of time, out of Time itself, and he's the only one who listens.

[has_a_horn]

Her letting these intruders die probably wasn't any better than if she had killed them herself, but Gabriel can't bring himself to care. If they were out to harm her for nothing but selfish reasons, then they deserve anything that may have happened to them as a result.

As she goes unfocused, he holds her as steady as he can, but he knows that this image is only a symptom of a larger problem. What she has to say when she finally meets his eyes resonates with something he had felt in her mind earlier. He's scared himself, for her, because he's not sure that he has the capacity to fix whatever is wrong. He grips onto her, demanding her focus. Needing her to focus on giving him any information that might help her. "What are you holding onto?"

[theoldgirl]

"Home," she murmurs instantly, and then can't tell why she said that. Reason and reality are running out through her fingers like sand and she's getting too weak to grasp them. With a small sigh, she leans into Gabriel's embrace and rests her forehead on his shoulder.

"Myself," she tries next. "Time." Did he ever realize those are very nearly the same thing? She can't remember. "There is... a rupture. It will tear me apart. Has. Is. It is tearing, pulling, piercing--" A shiver runs through her and she just barely stops herself from getting caught in a mental loop of distress. "But I am holding it, until the Doctor saves me. Or until I save him." If the only thing she can do before her own destruction is to bring the Doctor to safety, she will be glad.

While she struggles to put these overwhelming facts into too small words, her mind unwittingly flows closer to Gabriel's again, reaching out for his comforting presence.

[has_a_horn]

When the TARDIS leans into him, he wraps his arms around her a bit tighter, trying to make himself understand her fragmented explanation. If she is holding onto a piece of her home, does that mean that the rift is involved?

When her mind makes contact with his again, he embraces her there as well, though the state of his mind and her pain makes it difficult for him to focus on anything but that.

He doesn't know what to ask that will produce the answer he needs to save her, so instead he says "Show me. Show me what you're holding onto. How it happened." He sets his head against hers, though he knows that the physical embrace is more a comfort to him than it is to her. "I can help. It'll be okay. Just let me see."

[theoldgirl]

His reassurance, his embrace, the touch of his mind, it all feels so tangible now, it feels like hope, and she presses against him more tightly with both her mind and body. But his fear is mingling with hers, or is it all hers to begin with? Yes, she's only projecting, surely, clinging desperately to an imagined comfort that has its source in the rupture within her. This sobering notion makes her tremble again, as though suppressing a sob.

"Perhaps if you were here," she says softly, uncertainly, somehow still doubting his non-existence somewhat, or just wanting to. "If you were here, perhaps you could help." She raises her head to look at him, suddenly concerned by an incongruous question. "Would you want to?" They hadn't parted on good terms, after all. Or had they? Whatever the chronology, there was always more strife than happiness.

Despite her words, the part of her that's more instinct than reason reacts to Gabriel's familiar presence by opening up to him further, though shifting uneasily like a wounded beast. Layers of tension and agony and fear of oblivion surround the center of her suffering - the relentless torrent of the rift that she cannot let go of because she can feel her universe and she needs it as desperately as survival. It is survival, and it's the frozen explosion at the heart of her engines, and she won't give up even as it kills her.

[has_a_horn]

"I want to." He lifts a hand to her face, cupping her cheek as he meets her gaze. "Call me sentimental, but I didn't stop loving you just because you chucked me to the curb." It seems strange to say it now, after losing her, but maybe if she understands that he cares enough to save her, she'll realize that he's really here.

When she opens up her mind to him further, he sighs and rests his forehead against hers. If only this wasn't happening now, like this, he might take it as a sign that they had something worth salvaging. As it is, he just wants to make sure that she gets out of this alive.

"It'll be okay." He allows her a path to escape even more into his mind if she wishes before following her pain to the root of this problem. It is the rift, but she's fighting against it, clutching to whatever is on the other side. And then he knows. She'd said home. It's a striking realization when he figures that it's her home universe that she's clutching to. Of course it is. What else would be so important that she'd kill herself trying to reach it?

"TARDIS-" She needs to let go.

[theoldgirl]

For a long moment, she allows herself to accept the comfort he is offering, the affection and kindness she'd loved so evident in his words and mind. The deeper their contact grows, the more she starts to believe that perhaps, somehow, against all odds and reason, he is here with her after all.

But all her thoughts are scattered when he touches the core of her pain, and a second later she senses his intent to make her let go of what's keeping her alive; it's a bright flare of threat and betrayal. Panic washes over her, instinct taking over, drowning out whatever coherent thinking she had left. She defends herself violently, pushes him away with a dismayed cry of protest while the room shifts and changes. The walls and the tree dissolve into a vast darkness, the white lights of the bulbs overhead expanding until they form ethereal shapes with gigantic wings and blades of piercing silver. The warriors begin their deadly dance in the air, slashing at each other, though a few hover closer to Gabriel threateningly.

Unfortunately for them both, she knows too well how to frighten him off.

[has_a_horn]

The TARDIS' panic seeps into him without any trouble at all, and as the surroundings change, he backs away further. He's sure that TARDIS could hurt him here, if she wanted to, and the less rational she becomes, the more likely it is that she'll lash out with more than illusions.

He stumbles back in the darkness as the enormous figures advance on him. He doesn't change his form to better fight them. He needs to get across to the TARDIS and this is the best way to do that. "TARDIS, stop! The rift is going to kill both of us if you don't let go!"

[theoldgirl]

His plea barely reaches her, and she's sure it doesn't make sense anyway, though she doesn't exactly have the wherewithal to analyze it right now. She stares at him uncomprehendingly, scared and defensive, while the figures slaughter each other and their dying cries rend the air. Horror and death and panic, it's all more memory than illusion now and it's slipping out of her control; she remembers how she'd felt when she saw this and is powerless to stop herself making the same associations again.

She raises her eyes at the winged creatures in fear, watches as they bleed red light that taints the sky a burnt orange, then dissolve into smoke and collapsed buildings wrecked by explosions. They're on a battlefield now, immersed in sirens and the screams of the dying, surrounded by laser fire and people trying to escape the relentlessly advancing Daleks. The TARDIS stares at the scene in shock, standing very still among the chaotic destruction like a pillar, or a box.

"Gallifrey..." she breathes in dismay as a temporal explosion alights the sky, barely visible to a human eye, but nobody is human here, everyone can feel the noxious gaping wound it leaves in the fabric of reality. Heavy dread envelops the TARDIS because she knows what this is; it's the last day, the day everything ends, and she's frozen in a very old, very deep kind of terror, one she was never prepared to feel again.

[has_a_horn]

The scene shifts, and Gabriel steps back as the threatening angels disappear, replaced by laser fire and burning buildings.

"Is this what you're holding onto? This moment?" He looks up into the sky, watching the horrible wound blossoming there. For a few moments, he's as frozen as she is by the sight. He can feel her terror, and he can't believe that given the scope of time, that this is what she'd choose to hold onto. This has to be something else. A memory. Something.

He makes his way back to her, and sets his hand on her shoulder. Without his own nightmare present, he's able to calm himself down a little, but his heart is still racing. "TARDIS? We have to go."

[theoldgirl]

It's only when he returns to her side that she even remembers he is there, or what passes for remembering; she's lost all coherence, only this moment exists now, and she's too overwhelmed by it to register his presence as out of place. At his words, she drags her gaze away from the bleeding sky, looking at him with eyes wide and shining bright with despair.

"There is nowhere to go," she tells him, voice shaking. She doesn't flinch when the building behind them collapses, ending someone's panicked cries. "The War is everywhere, death and perversion, paradox, every point in time burning... It has to end." On the last word she takes a shuddering breath like a sob, then attempts to school herself into something like determination, trying to face the last terrible certainty of the war. "We are going to end it. We have to. The Doctor thinks I can't see it, but it's my choice too." Her beautiful Doctor, who has nearly lost himself in the fighting, and her along with it. They will do this together, as they always have, and let the universe have peace.

But she's not the only one who can see the future of their actions unfolding, and suddenly a dire wailing rends the air. Huge dark shapes form to surround the TARDIS, undefined in their non-corporeality but heavy with presence, furious, terrified and familiar. She stares at them and gasps as recognition hits her; these are her own, her sisters, all returned to Gallifrey when the Daleks closed in, and they refuse to be sacrificed.

[has_a_horn]

Gabriel feels the TARDIS' recognition, but he doesn't have the context to know what these new and menacing things are himself. What he does know is that their presence is a deep emotional blow for her. He steps in front of the TARDIS protectively and reaches out with his influence, trying to stop this.

"There is somewhere to go." They're so deep into her psyche that he's having trouble even gaining purchase against it. He screws his eyes shut in concentration and tries to get rid of all of this. "Don't you...don't you remember falling through the rift? New York?" He's grits his teeth with the effort of forcing her away from this scene. It isn't working.

"That's reality. This. Isn't." He takes a deep breath and grips the scene with his mind, holding it instead of sweeping it away. Around them, everything pauses. This is the best he can do. At the center of the frozen landscape, he turns and takes her by the shoulders. "You and me are the only things that matter here, and we need to get out."

[theoldgirl]

She can feel Gabriel's influence cutting through the oppressive presence of her sisters and for a moment her attention is almost shaken loose from the scene, but they are too close, the destruction too vast, the scope of the sacrifice too horrible. They are pleading with her and threatening her and she doesn't want this, can't bear it, feels herself weaken under the incredible pressure of it. Gabriel's words are supposed to help, they're supposed to be a solution, she can tell that much, but she's fallen through rifts, been to many New Yorks, so what is he trying to say?

And then everything stops and she gasps at the force being exerted all around her, struggling to drag her eyes away from the scene and back to Gabriel. How did he do this? She can only think of one entity powerful enough to influence reality on this scale and she pales even more, placing her hands on his chest in a faint gesture of appeal. "Are you the weapon? The Moment? We need you to end this, all of it, we understand the price, but please." It comes out in a rush, as though she's afraid she won't have the resolve to finish her request, or the strength. Around them, the landscape is starting to fall away, tearing up, even the accusing shapes of the other ships fading reluctantly. But this isn't the War's doing, it's her mind slowly disintegrating under the damage, and she's shaking.

[has_a_horn]

"I'm not a weapon." He shouts back, tense and frustrated and scared. He can feel her mind crumbling under the strain of holding on to her universe. The landscape, the things, even the smell of Gallifrey burning begins to fade away. He grips her tighter. For one horrible moment, he thinks that she might send him away along with the memory, but she doesn't have the strength.

"I'm trying to help." He stands there, lost. Around them, the world falls silent and the moment seems to stretch out endlessly. He takes a deep breath and blinks away tears. She's not listening.

"I'm sorry. This isn't gonna be fun." He pulls her to his chest to keep her from shaking and pushes his way into her mind. The point of contact between her and the rift is easy to see now. Around it, damage is spreading in all directions, poisoning her. There's nothing he can do now to try to repair the damage. It's spreading too fast and too violently.

With a muttered apology on his lips, he grabs hold of the connection and does his best to sever it.

[theoldgirl]

If his forceful influence was a shock before, now it's a violation, an alarming otherness boring through the torn structures of her self, and she cries out in fear and pain. For a moment, she tries to fight it, to throw a few remaining shields up around her core, but she is drained entirely now and collapses in his embrace.

When he tears at the connection, a blinding flash erases the rest of the landscape, replacing it with endless white nothingness and the splinters of her heart frozen around them. The brilliant fragments pulse with the life of her own universe and now she can see what is happening, finally understands, and is terrified. "Gabriel," she sobs, realizing what he's doing, what he's been trying to do this whole time. "Don't... I have to get home, you know I do..." It's a weak plea, but it's all she has left while she rallies the very last of her strength to cling to the fragments of home, keep them from cracking and disappearing as her contact with the rift falters.

[has_a_horn]

He feels a surge of hope when she calls him by name. This isn't what she wants, but it's the only thing that will bring her back to herself and keep her alive.

"Not this way." he sighs, feeling his own longing for home magnified by hers. He cradles her head against his shoulder, fingers tangled in her hair. "You'd tear apart before you made it through." His lips flatten into a tight line and he forces himself to action instead of mourning. He wishes that he could have helped her home instead of this.

The point of the connection, once bright and menacing in her mind, is now more akin to a burning coal. He renews his efforts, pressing in to wrench the TARDIS from the rift. His body tenses with the effort of forcing her mind further away from it. In his bed at home, his limbs shake and his hands clench into fists.

The flame diminishes and sputters out. When the connection is completely lost, they are left with each other. He takes a shaky breath and doesn't move but to loosen his grip on her. He's not quite ready to let go of her yet.

[theoldgirl]

She tries to hold on until the very end, driven by the singular desperate need for home, but she has nothing left to make a stand with against Gabriel's will. When she feels the connection shatter, she sobs into his shoulder, overwhelming despair rushing into the void left by the struggle.

Her mind is a timeless limbo, but even so she stays like this for some time, unable to process everything, still aching with the wound the rift left in her, held upright only by his support. Eventually she raises her head to look at him with wet, empty eyes, but she doesn't know what to say to him. She doesn't have the strength to be angry or confused, and she can't thank him, not yet. Without the rift damaging her consciousness, she doesn't need to be here any longer, so with a heavy sigh she flows out of his arms, away from his mind, and out of the telepathic current.