The Mistress stares up at the ceiling of the vault and knows that she is not there. It yawns above her, cavernous and cold and everything she had seen for a long time. She sees the stars in it somehow, as if it had been made into a mosaic while she'd slept, constellations and distant waves of stardust glittering wetly before her eyes, beautiful and unreal.
Her breathing is unsteady and she thinks that outside of herself, the things that she is experiencing and seeing right now anyway, something must be going very, very wrong with her body and mind. It rattles with her, chest feeling like there's a marble rolling about inside it, air not moving, stuck in her lungs.
She watches the Doctor walk into the room through doors that do not move.
He freezes and she walks up to him, inspects his face, runs a hand across skin she cannot feel in any real way.
His face says that he does not love her, not in the way that she wants, and she knows that it's true in this moment even if her whole self would not accept it.
There's a glitch in everything and the doors are gone, replaced by a forest on fire, sparks flying through the air, cybermen catapulted by explosions which rock the ground under her feet.
She walks past the Doctor, frozen still, frowning, disappointed, unloving her.
The Mistress walks the walk of those who sleep, knowing she can face no harm here, be hurt by no physical thing.
A feeling of impatience settles over her as she does, as if there is somewhere she needs to be, somewhere important, a destination which must be reached before it's too late.
A man screams at her and past her as she walks, yelling incoherently, dying and reforming and dying again, his bleach blonde hair burning up and regrowing and singeing away again.
The Mistress walks past him, walks down wet steps soaked with sea water and seaweed which has stuck fast. There's no rope to stop her from falling but her steps don't falter as she steps into the small boat, hands tied, and there are people around her and they're in uniforms and she knows that they will kill her but she is also safe here, in the little boat with its lantern to guide her.
On either side of the river there are forests of trees on fire.
Out here on the water she is safe.
Out here on the water she can go further, can reach what she is looking for maybe.
She passes a temple in a flooded valley, sees herself die on the dais, electric running through her whole body.
She sees people in red and gold running, screaming, hears metallic cries around her, crying out death and destruction and shattering the dome above them. Shards ring through the air and drop into the water, the sound stronger somehow than the cries of daleks and screams of civilians.
And then she is alone on the ocean in her boat, paddling as fast as she can because she is going somewhere.
Girls run past her, laughing shrilly as a clock rings and a ship towers above hers, a man looking down at her, face blocked out by his hat as she is swept away in his wake, going the direction opposite him.
She is turned under, feels everything spin and lose itself, all direction scattering to the winds.
And Rassilon she's been trying- she's been going as far as she can- but her lungs are still shaking and her breathing is failing her and it's all for him who does not love her, has unloved her.
And then she is walking through the rubble, an abandoned city on an abandoned planet.
Hers.
There are bones in the street, graveyards as empty as they have been for generations. The glass dome is shattered beneath her feet and does not crunch as she steps on it.
And then she reaches the outskirts, the village he'd lived in, houses empty, windows blown out. She begins to climb the hill at the end of the dirt path, knows that it will take her to where she needs to be. Perhaps it is the end.
And she reaches the top and the sky is alight with fire and she feels it, a shot right between her hearts.
She opens her eyes and laughs, feeling that burning sky in her veins as she gasps for the air she's been missing, sees him, herself, in front of her, laughing like the shit he is but dying all the same, just as she is.
And she knows that she's saved him, her friend, somehow.
She's pulled herself into the correct timeline, ensured that he will live though she can't remember the steps she's taken now, only seeing the face of the one who used to be her and knowing then the path of fate, the network of lines she could follow into death, rebirth, destruction and chaos.
She had chosen him of course, the Doctor. She had chosen for him to live no matter what.
And now she will pay the price.
She will be unloved and unknown.
And then she is back on the hill and she can see the horizon stretching out before her.
A voice speaks to her somehow though she hears no sound. It says that she can have another chance and the price for that chance is that she will feel unloved and that it is fair.
The Mistress doesn't think that it is fair.
She looks back behind her, at the water and the city and the forests on fire.
She's come so, so far and she'd hoped for rest, a reason to end.
In the end though she will always keep going.
She nods, raises her head.
"Alright then." She agrees.
She supposes that she hasn't gone quite far enough yet.
The Mistress breathes in and out, promising to herself that she will remember who she is, who she wants to be, that she will find the Doctor again, will be loved again.
The Mistress steps forwards.