Never:
There are days when the sky seems dark. There are days when it seems like the sun will stop shining. There are days when it seems like it all stops moving.
There are days when it should.
The moon stops reflecting, the world stops turning. Smiles turn into frowns, and laughter into tears. All happiness is lost in a sea of sorrow.
There are days, weeks even, when the memories force their way to the surface. The tortured, lost days of aimless wandering. The days that never mattered, never were. The days that still haunt the memories of the survivors.
Nightmares force their way through the flimsy wall the mind puts up. In these days, sleep is a forgotten concept. In these nights, sleep is only a land of horror that swallows all good in the world.
Insomnia. That's the name they give it. They're wrong.
They're always wrong.
It's not insomnia. It's memory. Memory that forces her mind to keep running, regardless of how long she's been awake. That's not insomnia. Right?
They called it depression.
Some called it insanity.
But it all happened. For every survivor, it still happened.
The days that never were, that were lost in paradox. The torturous days of mankind, where all were slaves.
The days of the Master and his Toclafane. The days of pain and horror. The days of slavery and loneliness.
There are days when she refuses to get up, forgets to stand. There are days that all hope seems lost. There are days when she forgets how to breathe. There are nights where she's back there. Back in the Year From Hell. Back in the Year That Never Was.
How many died that year? How many were given a second chance? How many don't know of the chance they received?
She never asked for this. She never asked for such a pain. She never asked to be so lonely, one of the few with any memory of those days.
Martha, she signed up for this. She climbed in that police box (the one that ruined everything. The one that destroyed everything by making it possible), and she left to do that thing for days on end.
There are days when she wants to give up and sink back into a place where that never happened. When she wants to be like the people in that naive world that forgot.
The same people who think the prime minister was shot for no reason. Who voted for him because he seemed kind. The psychopath who could hide his insanity.
She'd like to be like one of the naive. One of the forgotten. One of the non-believers.
She wants to say that never happened.
She can't deny it. The world decided to let her in on a secret of a world that never was.
She wishes it hadn't.
(Just to make this clear, that was Tish Jones. In this drabble, she's still suffering from the events of 'Last of the Time Lords'
I'm sorry. I didn't notice how long it's been. You have permission to throw ONE pitchfork at me. Just one!)