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

[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.