To the End of Hope and Back Again
I've done a lot of travelling in my life. I've been a lot of places. Some are places you can't even begin to imagine others are places that you should never have to imagine.
I started travelling as a kid. My family would go on so many different holidays. France, Italy, Spain, Africa, and America. All of it was so exiting. I'd sit in the back seat of the car, Leo would be on one side and Tish on the other, and we'd squabble over the smallest of things but most of all we squabbled over legroom. There never seemed to be enough with all the luggage packed in.
Then I travelled with The Doctor. The places I went. The things I saw. It was amazing, indescribable, and absolutely terrifying. The whole of time and space was mine to see. You can't begin to imagine how that feels. I could go anywhere, see anything that I desired.
After that came The Master. And I was so scared. I lived for a whole year in fear. I thought I was going to die on so many occasions but there was nobody there to hold my hand. I just wanted a hand to hold that year, especially after Japan was burned to the ground, where there was no one else alive for miles around, where there were only the whispers of the dead.
I didn't care whose hand it was; I just wanted to feel I wasn't so alone.
All that year my hope was slowly dying. Even if we managed to beat The Master the world had been destroyed, everything was gone. I saw the whole world, I had walked it all, and I saw it die. And think, maybe I died with it because when it was all over, I still couldn't live.
Then I joined unit. They sent me places for work. I saw London with nightlife again. It was free of the wild dogs that haunted it at night. I was sent to Egypt and the Nile was alive and full of fish instead of the frozen wasteland it was before.
I worked in New York, which was so full and alive and absolutely brilliant. They sent me to China, where there wasn't a fusion mill in sight. And all the while I was slowly bought back to life. I've seen the end of hope and come back from the brink.
The world which was so terrible was suddenly so alive and wholly wonderful. Seeing it that way after everything, it's beautiful. I never understood The Doctor's love of humanity, of the way we cling on to survival to the very end, but I think I get it now.
I never did go back to Japan though.
