There were pools everywhere in the forest.
But there were no stars in the sky.
And the pools held no water.
There were no animals. No sound of any kind. No breeze and no scents.
Just darkness that flitted and shifted between the eerily-spaced tree trunks, the ground broken by nothing except for the pools that held something even darker still.
This was definitely, Tegan had decided, not Brisbane.
Home, the Doctor had said. Think of home. And she had.
Then she died.
She was certain of that. She had felt her skin tear and rip even as she felt spirit break apart and drift into nothingness, desperately trying to conjure up an image of her old house, her yard, her room in the TARDIS anything and…. And failing.
Then she was here, alone in a dark forest filled with trees of onyx and sliver that stretched up into nowhere. Lost. Alone.
But not afraid.
Tegan squatted by the nearest pool and stared into its depths, wondering. She looked for a rock to chuck in the middle, but there was nothing. The ground about her was smooth and featureless. She hugged her knees and rested her chin in the valley between them. She should be afraid, shouldn't she? Or does dying cure all fears…
It wasn't home. It was dark and lonely and strange. And yet oddly familiar. Like a story she'd heard from long ago.
Lions and tigers and… oh my.
The Doctor was there, across from her, on the other side of the pool. Tegan started and shouted with surprise.
But he couldn't hear her. He wasn't there. Not really. He was faint, hazy. A ghost. He couldn't see her, but he too was looking into the pool.
Tegan looked down again, into the impenetrable blackness. And saw a spark, bright, blinding, miniscule.
Déjà vu.
She'd seen this before. It was tiny, it was unimaginable. But nonetheless, it was the Universe being born.
"And so it expands, every outwards, never ceasing." It was the Doctor's voice, not in the air, but in her head. Tegan meant to answer him, but knew he couldn't hear.
A hand, ivory black, dipped into the pool and plucked out the ever-expanding globe. The figure, an alien, held the ball of fire before him, and stood on the edge of the pool between Tegan and the Doctor. They could both see him, even though they could not discern the other.
It was one of the same aliens that had abducted them, Tegan realized. The ones who had killed her.
The same, but different. Smoother. Older. Kinder.
It smiled at them both, in turn, but saved a wagging finger for the Doctor. It gestured down to the ground again. Where there had once been a lone pool, was now a basin, fed by a stream dark stream at one end and open to a larger one at the other.
The figure gently placed the glittering cluster of stars and novae back into the pool and Tegan saw the Doctor's face light up with understanding.
Tegan looked again. The Universe was still expanding, but not equally; faster in some areas than others. Carried by the current, drifting.
Tegan blinked. She never thought of space as anything other than nothingness. Static. A blank nothingness, painted by stars and planets. Not fluid, not a moving canvas that began to pull the colors apart.
The alien smiled again, an angular expression. Naughty, almost. It took their hands and leapt into the pool.
Tegan was pulled into its wake, and felt the Doctor brush past her as they slipped into the pool and left the forest behind.
Tegan had the strangest urge to hold her breath. She reached to plug her nose, but there was no need. She was submersed, afloat amid the stars and lights and clouds, as intangible as they were, both larger and smaller than they were at the same time. The Doctor was beside her, unaware, as they floated through the universe, as if swimming in an ocean full of incandescent algae, spreading outward, but also pulled by the current, by the tide toward something else, somewhere else.
It was only then that she saw the Nothing. It came from the above. It came from the sides. It came from below. It devoured worlds with a swift suffocating blackness. Brushed aside whole galaxies.
It was then that Tegan felt afraid.
The darkness wasn't in the pool. It was coming from outside the Universe. Something larger. Something incomprehensible. Uncaring. Oblivious.
It was going to destroy them all.
And not even notice.