Amarantos
By TwinEnigma
Warnings: Mention of suicidal ideation.
III: Bleed Out
She emerges from the tear, battered and utterly exhausted. Her form shudders, wracked with pain from the jarring injuries sustained during her journey, and she can feel the sparks from the shorted panels in her control room. A status check confirms her fears: she lives, but her navigation and communication systems have been shorted out completely and her power is dangerously low. Several other critical systems are near failure and many of her internal supports are mangled beyond repair. Her sensors are about the only thing still functional.
She is adrift and alone, save for the steadily dimming pulse of the vortex in her heart, and she is dying.
It doesn't matter much anyway, she thinks tiredly. She knew this was a one way trip when she started. Last time, it'd killed her and, though she'd hoped to see her Doctor one last time before it did, it looks like her plans have failed. She's alive, crippled and dying, but still terribly aware and that means she's missed her mark completely.
She thinks it's almost funny in a horrible way that she can't even kill herself properly.
She retreats inward, shutting down and diverting power from as many rooms and subsystems as she can to lessen the pain. Behind her, the tear widens, spilling just enough energy to keep the vortex pulsing. It's not a good sign, but she has no power to fix it and her Doctor is...
He'd be so mad with her, if he were here.
She curls in on her own consciousness to wait for the end, and in the distance, she thinks she senses a ghost of her own kind. Fitting for the last of her kind, she supposes. Perhaps she'll see him, too.
She is so old and so tired.
She sleeps.