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It’s dust, this time around. Tasteless and dry and clogging up her lungs like the ash did once or thrice upon a time.
Temporal weapons. None of the shoddy engineering behind the dalek attacks- those were still rooted in combustion, brute force over finesse and leaving the aftertaste of burned ozone and smoke clinging to the back of her throat for regenerations after. This, here- whoever did this was a temporal engineer of the highest order. The rising smoke is gleeful, an afterthought for aesthetic purposes rather than the core of the attack itself.
The attack is all dust, time passing through everything and everyone and tearing it down to atoms, entropy inevitable and unescapable. Gallifrey was supposed to be immune to this kind of attack- parts of the citadel still stand, holding out for time immemorial before succumbing. She’s seen planets ravaged by these kind of attacks before (she’s even launched them herself, watched galaxies crumble beneath her fingertips, and it was only the loss of her homeworld that meant her nightmares were usually filled with ash instead). Seeing Gallifrey fall to one-
It was supposed to be safe. Hidden, not her responsibility- not anymore, if it ever was- but safe.
She doesn’t step outside of her TARDIS. She doesn’t need to. The memories she’s been supressing- things she thought she’d finally moved on from, when she was an old Scottish man with eyebrows who went through the centuries the long way round and learned to move on- are back with a vengeance, and her nightmares don’t need any more fuel.
The door closes, her TARDIS trying to shield her from the site of it, pulsing horror-shock-grief at the back of her mind. The doors- so recently breached by the Kasaavin, one of her homes has been violated and the other ravaged by time- aren’t going to be enough. Not now that she’s seen.
What’s the point? She breaks every rule in the book, crossing her own timeline to end the war, finally expelling the smoke and ash and letting Gallifrey stand, then someone comes along and undoes it all. She ties herself down, saddles herself to her oldest friend in the desperate hope she might change, and then-
When I said someone did that, obviously I meant... I did.
It’s been a long time since she felt angry like this.
Oh, sure, she’s always angry, simmering with rage that she hides behind a pretty face and a cheerful smile, her human fam there to remind her when to keep it in check. But this-
She’s thrown the disc across the room before she’s really remembered what’s going on in the physical world, desperate to do something- anything- to release some of the rage now boiling over, uncontrollable. The strength leaves her instantly, leaves her slumped against a column gasping for breath. There’s dust curling in her throat- she can feel it, itching away- and there’s a fire roaring in her stomach, up and up and stealing the scant oxygen straight out of her lungs, blinding rage and her heartsbeat pounding and she doesn’t know if it’s just her or if he is in her head, too, stoking the flames with satisfaction, and there’s grit clinging to the sweat lining her palms and the texture makes her want to scream but she doesn’t have enough air-
She doesn’t know how long she sits there, not really breathing, Gallifrey crumbling in her mind even as her TARDIS flickers a gentle blue and sends her thoughts of gently lapping waves. In, out. In, out. Inoutinoutinoutinout. One two three four. One two three four. One two three four.
It shouldn’t be a calming rhythm, but as her universe spirals out of control, the thoughts of her oldest friend betraying her yet again are a kind of familiar comfort to take refuge in.
Yaz and Ryan and Graham are waiting for her. Briefly, she considers just- not going back. Sitting here and waiting and waiting and letting time wash over her, let them all go home to their gorgeous blue planet and move on with their lives. They’ll hate her for a while, of course, but she won’t have to see it.
(They’ll never know why. She thinks of a girl with a bright smile that she gave a scholarship to, once, of how she had always wondered about the past and the future and everything in between, and she sees herself set course for Gallifrey even though she suspected she already knew. They probably deserve answers, these three humans, even if they won’t like them and even if she probably won’t give them for months now, if ever.)
She can still feel the dust clogging her airways as she goes to collect her fam, to finish saving the day and tie the timeline up in a nice neat bow. Short of breath, still. (She shouldn’t be, respiratory bypass and all, but the dust won’t leave and the constant press of time against her bones, once comforting, is now the shadow of an executioner’s sword, her people silently, accusingly watching from the other side). They smile when they see her, though- Graham makes some comment about how they haven’t been replaced, after all, and she doesn’t think about Ada and Noor and how neither of them wanted to forget, or how she feels she should have learned something about mind wipes but can’t remember it (oh, the irony).
And they’re off. Five trips, long enough for the humans to get some sleep in between but short enough that they don’t really have time to ask questions. They don’t even ask to go home, which, well. She files it under for future consideration then returns her focus to keeping her smile from being too sharp.
They go to her past, now- her fam wants answers even if they don’t say anything and maybe if she keeps giving them these little glimpses then they won’t even push her.
A moonwalk, where a hospital appeared, once. The spacesuit hides her face and Ryan is excited about his new rock, so it’s a double win. Humans need to sleep for hours so she has plenty of time to wash all the dust off afterwards, coughing up half a lung even though she knows the spacesuit won’t have let the dust in, that it’s just an illusion that her throat is this dry.
Sightseeing on Marinus, where she glimpses her granddaughter around every corner but at least she can pass off her frantic searching as concern over the acid seas and jagged glassy beaches.
Barcelona, finally. The dogs with no noses are just as funny this time around as they were the last- which is to say, hilarious, even with Gallifrey’s fall imprinted on the back of her eyelids.
They stop for milkshakes on Iceworld, and none get tipped on anyone’s heads. She slurps her own- banana, bananas are good- and she sees the waitress, some random young girl working a minimum wage job with a timeline that’s perfectly linear. The worst she’ll face will be a corrupt manager refusing her a pay rise. She’ll never see the fall of Gallifrey. The Doctor will never regret taking her to change a planet, and instead picking up the splintered pieces that planet spat out the other end.
There is, it turns out, absolutely nothing on Frontios. There’s no sign of the hatstand, either, which is a bit disappointing and would have at least been an entertaining explanation for her fam.
If it had been there, and she had explained, then maybe they wouldn’t have confronted her after. If only, if only.
It’s the basic speech- the one her past selves delivered with pomposity, for all she barely manages more than a monotone. Gallifrey. Constellation of Kasterborous. Time Lord. (Time Lady? Eh, who’s left to keep track.) Regeneration. TARDIS. Master.
Not enough information to do something useful with, surely, but- maybe enough to satisfy them. For now, at least.
It won’t hold forever. History will catch up with her sooner or later. It always wins.
The dust of her fallen civilization lodged in the back of her throat is proof enough of that.